Memory

Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB 2400MHz DDR3 Review

vortez
December 18, 2012 14 Min Read
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Kingston’s latest HyperX DDR3 memory kit has vicious attributes and aggressive looks. Does it have performance to match? Time to unleash the Beast!


Product On Review: Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz 32GB DDR3
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Kingston Technology
Street Price: £244.83 RRP (at time of review)



It’s been ten years since Kingston broke onto the scene with their HyperX range of memory modules. To celebrate this they have pushed the envelope of memory performance once step further and released a very special product. The HyperX range from Kingston memory is synonymous with performance and today we have the pinnacle of this performance with the latest memory kit fresh of the production line: Kingston Beast.



The Beast kits come in a variety of sizes from 8GB to 64GB accompanied with varying speeds of upto 2400MHz. Today we will be sampling the upper echelon of this range with a massive 32GB (4x8GB)DDR3 running at the blistering speed of 2400MHz. Latencies run from CAS9 and upwards and as we will see, the beast not only has vicious performance but also aggressive looks to match. A wolf in sheeps clothing this kit certainly isn’t. Its an all out balls to the wall extreme performance kit that has the potential to become a serious contender for our top awards.

Kingston on Beast
HyperX® Beast memory features a dynamic new heatspreader to maximise thermal dissipation for increased reliability. Its cool, aggressive look enhances any system. This high-performance memory offers the largest corresponding capacities available today and speeds of up to 2400MHz for ultra-responsive multitasking and an overall faster system. It’s Intel XMP ready and designed to work with third-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and the latest AMD performance and gaming processors. It’s backed by a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

Specification & Features


Capacity 4x8GB
Frequency Speed 2400MHz
Operating Temperature 0°C to 85°C
Storage Temperature -55°C to 100°C
Dimensions 125.8mm x 47.9mm
Double Data Rate: DDR3
Timings: 11-13-13-33 2T
Voltage: 1.65V
Part Number: KHX24C11T3K4/32X
HTS: 8473.30.1140, ECCN: EAR99




– 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
– Dynamic black design and sharp edge accents
– 100-percent factory testeD
– Lifetime Warranty

Packaging & First Look



We see the same packaging that we saw with the HyperX Predator kit.

The packaging is basic by today’s standards. Arriving in a plain brown box which has inside 2 slivers of foam protecting the inner packaging which encompasses the modules. The plastic packaging provides minimal protection but it should be enough to prevent static discharge which is the arch-enemy of any PC component.


The HyperX Beast comes in a 4x8GB kit which is designed for use of the X79 platform to take advantage of the Sandybridge-E Quad channel memory controller.


The memory module is of a very attractive design. A matt black aluminium heatspreader dominates the appearance with its fins and louvres which frame the product title. Immediately noticeable though is the green PCB. We have said it many times before that really do wish manufacturers would not use a green PCB. A black PCB would look so much more appealing.


The rear of the module is a mirror image of the front with just a specification sticker proving the only difference.


Instead of adding anything useful to the sticker on the rear of the module, Kingston have simply added 1.65v which is the only hint at the specification save for the product code and serial numbers which if you visit Kingston’s website will give a full breakdown of the specification (see page 2).


The modules (including heatsink) measure 47mm high at the tallest point and 43mm in the centre.


While the extra 17mm may mean some extra large CPU heatsinks do not fit(depending on orientation) with these modules installed, the fact that the centre of the heatsink is slightly smaller means that heatpipes have less of a chance of being obstructed than other modules such as the Kingston Predator we reviewed previously and Corsair’s Vengeance pictured above for comparison.


Here you can see the profile of the fins which should aid heat dissipation. During testing, the modules did not get hot at all, despite the 1.65v used.

Overall, the Kingston HyperX Beast kit is an extremely good looking piece of hardware. We still take issue with Kingston using a green PCB and would like to see basic settings on the stickers but aside from these small issues, this kit is sure to stand out in any PC setup.

Test Setup & Overclocking

Test System

Motherboard MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 3.3GHz
Power Supply ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler XSPC Raystorm 750 RS360




Memory kits on test:
Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB 11-13-13 2400MHz

Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB 11-13-13 2133MHz

Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB 9-11-9-27 1866MHz
G.SKILL ARES 16GB 9-11-10-28 2133MHz
Patriot Division 4 Viper Extreme 16GB 9-11-9-27 1866MHz
Corsair Vengeance 16GB 9-10-9-27 1866MHz
G.SKILL RipjawsZ 16GB 9-10-9-28 1866MHz

Overclocking



Above are the SPD settings of the memory kit in today’s review.

The Kingston HyperX Beast comes with 2 X.M.P profiles which can be set to the following frequencies and latencies:

Profile 1



Profile 2



Unsurprisingly, we did not manage to push the kit any further than those settings found in profile 1 despite increasing the voltage slightly to 1.7v. The good news though is that there are 2 profiles from which to choose which means that if your PC is unstable with the higher frequency of 2400MHz @ 1.65v, perhaps due to a weaker internal memory controller on the CPU then you can always use the 2nd profile of 2133MHz @1.5v. With this in mind we will be testing both profiles in our suite of benchmarks.

SuperPI 1.5 & HyperPI 0.99b


In August 1995, the calculation of pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits was succeeded by using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo. The program was written by D.Takahashi and he collaborated with Dr. Y.Kanada at the computer center, the University of Tokyo. This record should be the current world record. ( Details is shown in the windows help. ) This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environment such as Windows NT and Windows 95 and called Super PI. In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes within 3 days with Pentium 90MHz, 40MB main memory and 340MB available storage.






The HiperPI front-end is basicly a program which allows selecting multiple threads of SuperPi to be run at the same time so you can test the stability and performance on multi-core machines.




AIDA64


AIDA64 is the successor to Everest ULTIMATE. This application not only details every component within a system but it also incorporates a comprehensive memory benchmarking tool that will ascertain bandwidth and latency figures.








Sisoft Sandra 2012


SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.








Futuremark 3DMark 11


Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.




DiRT 3


As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.


Overall Performance


We don’t usually have this section in our reviews, instead leaving our closing thoughts for the conclusion. On this occasion however, we felt that this product deserved special consideration as the benchmarks we have run do not give this particular kit the best representation being that it is a 32GB kit and the others on test were 16GB. Because of the higher speed and high capacity, the timings were a little slacker so in some respects, comparing it to the other kits on test was a little unfair.

So what makes this kit special. Quite simply it is the combination of two factors…

Speed
Being 2400MHz is an achievement in itself but to get 2400MHz running with a 32GB capacity (4x8GB) is nothing short of great. Upon receipt of this kit we had our doubts that the kit could run at such speed in an ultra stable environment however we ran 20 passes of LinX with full memory allocation and it ran without a hitch at both X.M.P profiles (2133MHz and 2400MHz). Still not convinced we then ran a 12 hour session of Prime95 (Blend) which again it passed with no problems at all. Just to be 101% sure we then ran memtest for 10 passes and again, there were absolutely no flaws found. It can therefore be concluded that this kit, in both profiles is 100% stable.

With the frequency set at 2400MHz, CPU instructions can be relayed quicker (19200MB/s) and while the timings are a little slack at this speed, they are not excessively so. It is certainly worth sacrificing timings on an Intel machine (for the most part) for faster frequencies which it appears what Kingston have done with the Beast kit. In truth though, the average user will struggle to see a major impact of having 2400MHz over say 1866MHz.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons people will buy high frequency memory is that it allows higher CPU overclocking without sacrificing memory speed too much. Overclocking on the X79 platform generally consists of adjusting the multiplier however, it is also possible in certain circumstance to raise the baseclock (our test CPU does not like baseclock adjustments at all sadly). This in turn however, also raises the memory frequency so if you are already at your limit of memory frequency, you will be restricted with how much baseclock you can add. The only other option is to lower the memory frequency to give you more headroom. Inevitably this means lowering the memory frequency to a level which is unacceptbale and thus unless you have high frequency memory to begin with, will mean lowering to a level which begins to effect applications. Therefore, to get the best balance of high CPU overclocking and high memory frequency, you will need the fastest ram you can get hold of to lesson the effects of dropping the frequency to allow baseclock overclocking to become more successfull.

Gaming will see some small benefits in FPS but perhaps the biggest beneficiary of high speed memory will be the encoder/editor be it music or video. Here is where it starts to get even more interesting…



Capacity
So you have the fastest ram available, what now? Well, it is all very good having fast ram but if that capacity is swallowed up waiting for instructions to be written due to a lack of capacity then performance will suffer greatly. Many applications are quite happy on 2-3GB of DDR3 as they were produced for a 32bit platform which can only address this value anyway. However, with the advent of 64bit, more and more programs have been freed to use much more memory and are becoming massive memory hogs so having 4GB is seen as minimum, 8GB as average with 16GB rapidly becoming the norm. For those memory intensive applications that are used to encode video or creating a symphony masterpiece then you may occasionally wish for more capacity.

Matters are only going to advance further too with more powerful programs requiring faster, higher capacity memory. It should therefore make sense to buy the fastest, highest capacity memory kit you can afford. We are not suggesting for one minute that anything below 32GB is obsolete – far from it. Today, 16GB is quite frankly overkill for the vast majority of enthusiasts, especially gamers however for future applications, as we have seen in the past, faster, higher capacity will be required to keep your PC running at an optimum pace. If you are in the minority who encodes video, composes music, edits multiple images then you will certainly benefit from more memory. For the rest of us, 32GB of Kingston HyperX Beast offers bragging rights today along with minor multitasking and gaming performance benefits but perhaps more importantly, you would benefit from future proofing for tomorrow.

Conclusion

The Kingston HyperX Beast kit performs extremely well. Having 2400MHz to hand is fantastic and at timings that are not to shabby either. Couple this with the fact you have 32GB (4x8GB) and this kit has to be one of the best kits available, especially if you want to future proof your machine.

It can of course be argued that 4-8GB is plenty of memory for a gaming machine today. However, it wasn’t too long ago that people scoffed at enthusiasts buying up 16GB of DDR3. 16GB is now very much the norm which just goes to show how quickly opinions and needs change. We have also seen how quickly memory prices can change and with memory now priced at a reasonable level, there couldn’t be a better time to upgrade. With games such as Crysis 3 almost upon us which is rumoured to be yet another PC killer, gamers and enthusiasts would do well to invest in memory upgrades. Encoding and editing HD video can also eat memory so it goes without saying that it is not just gamers who will benefit from upgrading for the future. Throw some deliciously sexy heatsinks into the mix and you have the Kingston HyperX Beast 4x8GB 2400MHz kit.



The more memory you add can mean instability rears its ugly head, especially if you overclock. Add to this the increased frequency of our 2400MHz kit and some serious strain will be placed on the internal memory controller. Thankfully, we encountered no such issues with the kit working straight out of the box (once the motherboard BIOS was updated). We did however like the fact that Kingston have added two X.M.P profiles. One at the maximum settings (2400MHz @ 1.65v) and one of a lower speed, lower voltage (2133MHz @ 1.5v). So in effect, what Kingston have done is taken a standard 1.5v memory kit rated at 2133MHz and done all the hard work for you by testing an overclock (X.M.P profile 1) and allowing you to set this so the memory is running at its maximum speed possible which was also born out by our own overclocking where we failed to push the kit further.

In short, the Kingston HyperX Beast offers sublime performance, looks great with those super black finned heatsinks and being a 32GB kit, offers enough future proofing for the foreseeable future. While it weighs in at around £240, most of the competition can only match this price by either taking away 16GB or dropping the speed to 2133MHz. Kingston make no compromise by offering both speed and volume at a very reasonable cost. For this reason it is a deserved winner of our prestigious Gold award.

Pros:
+ Great looking memory kit
+ Blistering speed
+ Future proofing
+ Two X.M.P profiles
+ Fair price point

Cons:
– Green PCB




Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.

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