This kit comes with a bit of a backstory that might be of interest to you, or might not, but hopefully, it helps explain things here a bit when it comes to this G.SKILL F4-2666C18Q-32GRS kit. So let's start at the beginning.

ASRock sent me an email asking me if I wanted the X299-ITX/ac motherboard, to which I obviously replied with a yes. How could I say no? ASRock explained that there was a bundled AIO kit to be used with that board to do the review with, and they already knew I had CPUs and such to use. There was a problem, however. DDR4 SO-DIMMs aren't exactly common, or cheap, I had none and the board needed them. I knew I could count on G.SKILL, so an email was sent and soon, sticks were on their way to me. These sticks aren't the kit G.SKILL offered.

As an enthusiast for PCs, performance and price are pretty important things to me. When it comes time to build a PC, we are all more than aware that the one area we do not need to have the best of the best is system memory. You want a good, reliable kit, but the fastest, most expensive kit just isn't required. G.SKILL's Ripjaws series of memory is about meeting those needs specifically, with the high-end enthusiasts getting their own products in the TridentZ line-up. So here we are with an expensive motherboard, a fancy 10-core CPU, and a decent videocard, so what memory do you choose?

A set of sticks that meets the maximum supported speeds of the CPU you have paid all that money for is a natural requirement. Getting those speeds and not having to even enter the BIOS at all makes this kit perfect for a specific type of user, and well, OK, those who might want to upgrade the DDR4 in their KabyLake laptops too. If you want a bit of overclocking, these sticks can do that, but that's not exactly what they were meant for. In the end, I asked G.SKILL for this kit specifically, and of course, I was happy with what I got. It was exactly what I asked for. Yet in the end, I have to send this kit back when this review is done. So while I'm happy with this kit, I am also sad to see it go.

The performance benchmarks might tell you something or they might not. There are some linear gains to be had by matching your SkylakeX CPU with appropriate memory, of that there is no doubt, but it seems that at times, these CPUs are almost more happy with lower speeds, depending on how you use them. I do have a decent CPU speed increase in use here on my ASRock X299-ITX/ac, but you might not, or maybe you've gone even higher. I know the board is capable of all three.

So the choice is yours if you need DDR4 SO-DIMMs to go with your ASRock X299-ITX/ac motherboard; you can go all-out and go for that 3800 MHz kit or can grab a set of these off the shelf at your local shop that you can just plug in and power up with. What I chose is pretty obvious.