[section_title title=”Introduction & Closer Look”]
Introduction & Closer Look
Brand: HyperX
Model: Savage DDR4 2800MHz CL14 (HX428C14SB2K2/16)
UK Price: £104.36 @ Amazon UK (At time of review)
US Price: $186.22 @ Amazon US (At time of review)
Today we’re going to be taking a look at a very interesting dual channel kit of DDR4 memory from a company who doesn’t need any fancy introductions, HyperX. HyperX are of course Kingston Technologies memory and gaming brand which over the last couple of years, has tried to distances themselves as being known as “Kingston”. Even though we all know who they are and what they are about, let’s focus on today’s product…
If you go back to the times of DDR3, HyperX released a couple of gaming and performance memory ranges which included the Fury and Savage kits; today we will be taking a look at a new release for DDR4 of the Savage, but more specifically, the HyperX Savage 2800MHz 16GB (2x8GB) dual channel DDR4 memory kit.
So what’s so special about this particular kit? Well it features dual XMP 2.0 memory profiles which consist of 2800MHz with CAS timings of 14-16-16 and a second profile of 2666MHz 14-15-15. Both these profiles run with an operating voltage of 1.35v which is a very nice increase over the standard JEDEC performance; JEDEC specifications are 2133MHz CL 15-15-15 at 1.2v exactly. One key design aspect with the DDR4 variation of the HyperX Savage kit is the all-black, but suitably low profile nature of the overall aesthetic. These modules should fit under virtually any air based CPU cooler due to their size, very comparable to the Corsair Vengeance LPX and Crucial Ballistix Sport LT memory kits…
As with all mainstream retail samples of memory, the HyperX Savage DDR4 is no exception to the “white label” specifications sticker which is standard practice. Here we can see the modules were produced in Taiwan and that HyperX is a division of Kingston!
This particular kit of HyperX Savage features a dual channel configuration on Intel’s Z170 Skylake chipset, but 2 kits of this memory (4 modules) would give quad channel capabilities on Intel’s other top performing chipset, X99 or Haswell-E.
A lot of HyperX kits tend to use Hynix MFR memory chips which favour higher speeds, but sacrifice some performance, but it’s good to see that this kit features a dual sided design which gives me the impression that the memory IC’s used here are of better quality than MFR. I would rip the heat sinks off to identify the exact IC’s featured, but I wouldn’t be able to do this without potentially damaging the memory thus I have left the heat sink as it is.
This kit has all the hallmarks of a good kit, dual sided IC’s? Check…Looks great? Check…and is low profile? Check…but how does it perform? Time to put it on the test bench and see if it’s as “savage” as it looks…
