Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz 2x4GB Review

Brand: Kingston
Model: HyperX Beast 2400MHz
Website: http://www.kingston.com/en/memory/hyperx/predator/beast
RRP: £80 (At time of the review)

Within the world of RAM today, there are so many manufacturers to pick from – but how do you choose the best for your system? Well, the straight up answer is that there is no right or wrong manufacturer to go for. In order to win your custom, the manufacturers have to try to design something which people are going to want and provide the additional extas such as warranty length to sweeten the deal.

Today, I will be taking a look at one of Kingston’s latest memory kits which derives from the HyperX Beast collection. This kit comes rated at 2400MHz with CAS timings of 11-13-13-31 and it will operate with 1.55 to 1.65 volts. Let’s take a look at the specifications and then see how the beasts fare in my tests.

Capacities 8GB–64GB (with 8GB, 16GB and 64GB kits)

Speeds of up to 2400MHz

1.5V & 1.65 V operating voltages enable stable overclocking

Compatible with Intel XMP auto-overclocking function

Designed to work with P55, H67, P67, Z68, H61 (AG), X79 and Z77 Intel chipsets; as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78 and E35 (Fusion) AMD chipsets

Carefully selected premium chips for maximum performance and overclockability

Vicious black heatspreader with matching black PCB

100-percent factory tested

Limited Liletime warranty

There isn’t much to say with regards to the packaging as it is very minimalistic. It’s not a bad thing, though. It keeps the modules secure in transit and the minimalistic design keeps the costs down which can be passed down on to the consumer. Anyway, enough chit chat… let’s see what the packaging looks like before we move on to the modules themselves.

The label on the front makes it extremely obvious what you have in your hands. Once you open the seal and look inside the packaging of the modules, you will find the two modules and a leaflet which contains the warranty information in several different languages that is hidden behind one of the sticks of RAM.

The all-black design of these modules, including the PCB, is something which a lot of enthusiasts look for today. If you are a regular forum member; how often do you see one or more members saying “but the PCB isn’t black – pass!”? It seems that manufacturers such as Kingston are listening and bringing black PCB to the masses.  Who knows what the new colour of the future will be? Well, no one does. However, black PCB is most likely something which is here to stay for a while yet.

The heatsinks are quite tall and you may have issues with clearance if you are using a bigger CPU cooler such as the Noctua NH-D14 or Thermalright Silver Arrow. Our RipJaws only just fit underneath such a cooler and these heatsinks are a good 8mm taller. You have been warned.

Due to this being a RAM testing system, we have opted to use a low performance graphics card to minimize driver and resource impacts.

Test Setup:

CPU: AMD Piledriver FX-8350 @4.4GHz

Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX

RAM: Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz

Graphics: 7300GT

Methodology:

When we test our RAM samples, we first do all of the benchmarks at stock speeds and timings and we then swiftly move on to seeing how far they can be pushed. We also see how much the RAM can tighten its timings with the stock voltage and speeds to see if there is any additional performance to be gained via that method.

All DDR3 RAM we test has a slightly increased voltage limit from the 1.65v limit to 1.7v to see how much extra performance there can be gained from the modules. By no means should you run on your daily system, it was done purely for benchmarking reasons.

Benchmarks:

AIDA64 – All memory tests

MaxxMEM

SiSoftware Sandra 2013 – Memory Bandwidth

Super Pi 32M – stability testing

Overclocking is always an interesting thing to me as you never know how far a component is going to go. Being a competitive overclocker myself, I love pushing components hard and to their limits… within reason in a review of course.

After having the G.SKILL RipJaws tested and seeing how far they went with minimal effort, I was expecting a similar story but sadly it was not to be. These modules did not overclock as easily and that is down to them using different ICs.  These modules topped out at 2516MHz and loosening the timings didn’t help. It did pass all benchmarks at the timings set forth below.

After testing the RAM sample with the maximum overclock, I set out to find the lowest latencies possible on stock voltage and speeds. The modules are 11-13-13 at stock and although there is no significant improvement in day-to-day performance, I managed to get them down to 10-12-11 with the stock voltage. That is quite a big drop in latencies which resulted in better performance all-round. However, this was with our sample, yours may not be capable of achieving the same results.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due and today, Kingston definitely deserve some. Kingston not only delivered a great looking module, they also delivered a good performing one which comes in at a reasonable price too.

In terms of overclocking, it would have been nice to see some modules that overclocked a little further and perhaps ones with slightly tighter timings to begin with. However, given that they are what they are, they performed very well and definitely held their own in our testing. What impressed me most was not the design or the overclocked performance, but the tightened timings results which these modules managed to achieve. Of course these XMP settings are set to ensure that they will operate at said frequencies without any glitches but the testing I did proved that they are well capable of running with much tighter timings than advertised which is always a huge plus.

The price is a touching on the higher side of the RAM spectrum but when you consider that you get a lifetime warranty as well as the peace of mind that you have purchased a product from one of the most established memory manufacturers in the world, it makes it that much more justifiable. This particular set is retailing around the £80 marker at the moment which given the price increases recently is not all that bad.

To conclude, would I recommend these modules? Absolutely. They look and perform great and with a lifetime warranty, it’s hard to resist. Kingston definitely got this product right in my eyes and therefore I am going to award it with our design award and quite fittingly, the HyperX Beast deserves the award for editors choice because I simply love them.

I would like to finish off by thanking Kingston for the sample.