A Closer Look

The Lexar Hades OC RGB sticks have a rigidly angled, rectangular design with the illusion of real depth to the heatspreader if you are looking at it laying flat.


The RGB section on top is an opaque plastic that is flush with the heatspreader, allowing for a flat top and even soft lighting to spread and remove any direct harshness from each LED when lit up. This is personal preference, of course, but having single bright LEDs directly in your eyesight is distracting to say the least.


The heatspreader has a nice brushed metal finish and "Lexar" logo in the center of each side.


These DIMMs are labeled as 3600 M/T for the XMP profile using 18-22-22-42 timings and 1.35 V. This is an ideal starting point for AMD Zen 2 (3000 Series) and Zen 3 (5000 Series) Ryzen-based systems, mainly due to Infinity Fabric supporting 1800 MHz without the need for much or any additional voltage to the SoC. It is Plug and Play for the majority of these CPUs. The loose timings aren't that impressive, but 1800 MHz is a good starting point for PC performance enthusiasts.

On a second pass I noticed that the memory is mislabeled on the stick. PC4-3600 is incorrect. It should be PC4-28800 for DDR4 3600 MT/s since the number after "PC4" is the theoretical bandwidth of one DIMM in megabytes per second.


These are single-sided DIMMs with 8x 2 GB ICs. Instead of being dual-rank, it is still single-rank. An interesting design choice. Advantages of sticking to single rank are reduced access command latency when accessing data from the same group of banks and less stress on the CPU. However, this is often offset by looser timings and longer refresh cycles due to the density increase for each IC to fit on a single side of the PCB.


I was curious to see who the IC manufacturer was, which Lexar blanked out in the SPD data, leaving only the primary timings as a hint of what these could be. Lo and behold, I still do not know. That is officially due to the part number not getting a ping on the interwebs. These are not branded with a Lexar logo even though they are clearly just sourced, which makes my job a bit easier. A good hint is the big "S" for SpecTek, a Micron division who sources and sells what are considered generally lower-binned Micron ICs.

If you look closely at each IC, you can see a type of serial number on the side; V934, RNPG, X2VP, RNPG, VCF3, VCF3, T62R, or TGK4. According to these identifications, four of the eight SpecTek ICs on this DIMM came from different batches. Otherwise, they would all match, having come from the same tape reel.

I asked the Lexar representative, who could not confirm my findings due to the nature of how these are sourced. It is common for vendors to buy ICs in large quantities from different manufacturers and bin accordingly. Therefore, the next batch may use another manufacturer's ICs, or the same brand is sourced for the entire product cycle. It is impossible to know from this side of the table.

In all honesty, this only matters if you are into overclocking or tightening up the primary timings. A revision number on the DIMMs like Corsair uses would have been a nice touch to give you a heads up on what to expect. I do not see any issues that may come up from normal use, especially at the modest 1.35 V operating voltage. Remember these are backed by a limited lifetime warranty from Lexar. Just don't expect amazing overclocking abilities from SpecTek ICs.


The Lexar Hades OC RGB comes in at 48 grams on my scale, which is on the lighter side. For height, it is 45 mm when rounding up with my calipers. The ideal height is 40 mm or below for the widest range of compatibility with air coolers. I also suggest checking with the manufacturer for whatever air cooler you intend to use. Often, all you need to do is raise the attached fan height; other times, the actual heatsink fin-stack is in the way, preventing installation of the DIMMs altogether.