The GeiL EVO Spear sticks are great additions to the options out on the market today, especially when so many of those options are focused on "RGB-everything" and have overly large heatspreaders. Their small metal covers and simple looks are quite refreshing when nearly everything else seems so focused on trying to catch everyone's attention. They work well in both AMD and Intel systems too, I might add, which makes them a great option for everyone looking for something a bit faster, but without all the bling.

On the AMD Ryzen front, the issues that seem to plague this platform really make figuring out what's really going on often more difficult than it needs to be. Fortunately, GeiL seems to have foreseen this problem, and has seemingly built a fair bit of overhead into these sticks so that users who end up in the situation I am in with my test rig can push past the problems and end up with a great working system with lowered latency. I really have to say I am left feeling quite impressed by these sticks and my time with them.

On the Intel front, these sticks just work. If you are curious, it seems that these sticks are made with Hynix memory ICs and not Samsung's, so their price should fall in a bit lower than sticks with Samsung ICs, which did make an appearance in our testing suite. With these sticks, even the Ryzen-branded ones, simply enable XMP and enjoy the slight performance boost on an Intel board, without any hassle. That includes Z170, Z270, Z370, X299... you name it, and these sticks just work, and that should be very appealing to anyone.

With many questioning on just how much memory speed is actually useful, the relatively low speed of 3000 MHz is achievable no matter what DDR4 platform you choose right now and falls within the range of where there are noticeable differences in performance in the majority of applications you may want to run no matter what type of enthusiast you are. I would like to see some higher-rated JEDEC profiling from all brands, and some I have talked to are working on that, but we still have to wait a bit for the widespread adoption of JEDEC 2666 MHz profiling. Drop the negatives, which I was really pulling at straws for, and wrap up all those positives up and you've got a great option without all the RGB madness I personally enjoy, a LOT. Be that as it may, with all the complaints about all that RGB stuff, all you RGB haters can relax because here's a great option for you!