Memory

Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 Review

vortez
November 19, 2012 10 Min Read
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Kingston HyperX is well known to be high performing kit but is the 16GB DDR3 Predator kit worthy of this title?

Product On Review: Kingston HyperX Predator 1866MHz 16GB DDR3
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Kingston Technology
Street Price: £73 RRP (at time of review)



Kingston are a company that are associated with all manner of storage products be it SSD, NAND flash products. They are however perhaps best known for their memory products, especially the extreme end of the memory performance market. Those who like to overclock and demand the very best performance products will therefore be familiar with Kingston’s HyperX branding which is carried through the entire range of Kingston products.



It is one such product we have for review today. The aptly named Predator kit hopes to hunt down the best memory kits out there, rip them to shreds and move on to it’s next victim. You would therefore believe that the Predator was incredibly expensive. You would however be wrong in this assumption because thanks to the plummet in memory IC pricing, buying a top end memory kit is now within reach of us all. With this in mind we have chosen to deliver this review now, when memory prices are rock bottom to give you the low down on whether the Predator kit is worth hunting down or one to be evaded. Read on to find out…

CAUTION: Users may experience extreme motion sickness and/or complete disorientation from the extreme speeds typically reached with HyperX® Predator. It is not intended for small children, the faint-at-heart, people with a lot of time to complete a creative project or anyone who settles for less. Featuring frequencies up to 2666MHz and a new heat spreader for greater heat dissipation, it’s Intel XMP ready, compatible with all popular brands of motherboards and backed by legendary Kingston® reliability. We might even recommend a helmet.


We’re reviewing the 16GB version of the Predator HyperX today, but the Predator kit is also available in 4GB, 8GB and 32GB with speeds up to 2666MHz.

Specification & Features


Capacity 4x4GB
Frequency Speed 1866MHz
Operating Temperature 0°C to 85°C
Storage Temperature -55°C to 100°C
Dimensions 125.8mm x 47.9mm
DDR3 Only
9-11-9-27 1T
Voltage 1.5V




– Capacities 4GB–32GB (with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB kits)
– Speeds up to 2666MHz
– 1.5V & 1.65 V operating voltages enable stable overclocking
– Intel XMP Ready; optimized performance settings handpicked and tested by Kingston engineers
– Dual Channel kit tailored for P55, H67, P67, Z68, H61 (AG), and Z77 Intel chipsets; as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78, and E35 (Fusion) AMD chipsets
– Exceptional clock and latency timing specifications to enhance overall system performance
– Heat sink design achieves effective maintenance of speed while prolonging the memory lifecycle
– 100% factory tested

Packaging & First Look



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.


Here we see the modules displayed together. First impressions are excellent as they are simply stunning to look at with a contrasting metallic blue and black finish.


A large X is incorporated into the aesthetic design of the extra large heatsink which stands at 47.9 mm high. With modules this tall, using a large CPU cooler may prove troublesome, especially with X79 as the module slots are so close to the CPU area. Nevertheless, Kingston believe that adding such a large heatsink will wick away enough heat to lengthen the lifespan of the memory, which incidentally is backed up by a lifetime warranty.


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


The specifications of the memory with X.M.P profiling enabled are 9-11-9-27 1866MHz @ 1.65v.


Despite the heatsinks being very tall, there was not a lot of vents nor long fins, instead the heatsinks are solid aluminium which weigh a fair whack more than the average memory kit.


Here you can see the paint finish on the modules which has a satin metallic finish. It must be said that this is one of the best looking kits we have come across for the X79 chipset.


My one gripe would be the decision to use a green PCB. While you are unlikely to notice a green PCB once the kit is installed, any pro pc builder should take extra care with the details and this is one area which I hope all manufacturers resolve. Green PCB’s are ugly and like flares, should be resigned to the 1970’s.

Thankfully, the huge heatsink, which even tops the Corsair Vengeance heatsinks used in our test setup, hides most of the PCB so it’s not a major issue. I fear the sheer size will however present problems to those looking to add these to a ‘performance’ air cooled pc.

Test Setup & Overclocking

Test System

Motherboard MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
Power Supply ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler Corsair H100




Memory kits on test:
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.



Enabling XMP saw the timings and frequency correctly set to 9-11-9-27 at 1.65v.



Overclocking the Kingston DDR3 set was not particularly easy. With the voltage raised to 1.65 to run X.M.P settings, this gave little headroom as we didn’t want to fry the kit. Regardless we did push it a notch higher to 1.7v in the hope of reaching 2133MHz. Sadly, with the stock settings maintained at 9-11-9-27 (1T) this resulted in a BSOD and despite various tweaks with the subtimings including slackening off to 2T, we were unable to hit 2133MHz with any stability until the main settings were relaxed to 11-12-11-32 2T. Not the best overclocking results we have had but not a bad performance either. Tightening the timings up we managed 8-9-9-24 but with a drastically reduced bandwidth of 1600MHz. For the purposes of showing the effect of our best overclock on bandwidth we have included those results with the stock settings of the Kingston kit…

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.


Conclusion

The Kingston HyperX Predator kit performs as it should at stock and presented no issues being compatible with our test setup. It certainly looks the business with those massive heatsinks but herein lays a couple of problems.

Primarily, getting the heatsinks to fit into your system with anything much bigger than a reference Intel heatsink will prove troublesome. If you intend on using them with something like Noctua D14 or Thermalright SB-E extreme air cooling designs then forget it – they simply won’t fit underneath. For watercooling this obviously isn’t an issue so if looks are what you want then you will certainly be hard pushed to find a better looking kit than these.

Our other issue is also connected with the tall heatsinks. When the kit does not overclock to extreme levels one has to ask why such tall heatsinks are required. There are kits out there with low profile heatsinks that appear to run fine even at higher frequencies than the overclock we achieved with the Predator kit. Unless you are pumping masses of voltage through the modules they are unlikely to burn themselves out, most likely the cause of damage would be from electron migration which no heatsink will be able to defend. Sure, they look fantastic but other than aesthetics, I fear they are overkill, especially with the limited overclocking results we achieved today.



Overall though the Kingston HyperX Predator performed well against our other 1866MHz kits and did provide some overclocking headroom. The kits is one of the best, if not the best looking X79 memory kit available. Furthermore, with a wide variety of choice not only for most Intel chipsets but also AMD, Kingston should be congratulated for releasing such a good range of quality, high performance memory.

Our only regret is that the overclocking performance could not match the towering height of those magnificent blue heatsinks on this occasion.

Pros:
+ Fantastic looking memory kit
+ Some overclocking headroom
+ Fair price point

Cons:
– VERY tall heatsinks may limit CPU heatsink selection
– Green PCB




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