Memory

Kingston HyperX Special Edition Sandy Bridge 1600MHz CL9 Review

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February 8, 2011 9 Min Read
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Back at CES Kingston announced a new special edition HyperX series designed for Intel P67. It’s here for review.


Product on Review: Kingston HyperX Special Edition (Sandy Bridge)
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Kingston
Street Price: £40 inc. VAT


Kingston, being one of the most prolific memory manufacturers in the world and more specifically in the UK, haven’t missed out on the Sandy Bridge bandwagon. Their latest release sees the ever popular HyperX series turn greyscale for a strategic assault on the Sandy Bridge P67 chipset.

In fact it was at CES 2011 just a matter of weeks ago that Kingston announced the release of this ‘Special Edition’ HyperX for Intel P67. As the press release suggested, available we have 2133MHz and 1600MHz 4GB kits. But there will be 8GB kits available too.

We have been keen to get our hands on this new “Special Edition” kit, and today we will be taking a look at a 1600MHz C9 kit with the following latencies – 9-9-9-27. Let’s waste no more time and commence our analysis.



Kingston’s Take:
This high-performance dual-channel memory kit is engineered to complement the new motherboards featuring the Intel® P67 Sandy Bridge platform as well as existing P55-based systems.

The modern design and look accentuates the new black and grey P67 motherboards in the market. And the high performance memory frequency they meet the demands of everyone from the enthusiast vying for the fastest benchmark score to the weekend gamer. HyperX Genesis Special Edition Grey is available in DDR3 2133- and 1600MHz 8GB kits.


Kingston’s KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX is a kit of two 256M x 64-bit 2GB (2048MB) DDR3-1600MHz CL9 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) memory modules, based on sixteen 128M x 8-bit DDR3 FBGA components per module. Each module kit supports Intel® XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles). Total kit capacity is 4GB. Each module kit has been tested to run at DDR3-1600MHz at a low latency timing of 9-9-9-27 at 1.65V. The SPDs are programmed to JEDEC standard latency DDR3 1333MHz timing of 9-9-9 at 1.5V. Each 240-pin DIMM uses gold contact fingers and requires +1.5V.

Technical Specifications

Intel XMP
CAS Latency
– 9-9-9-27
Capacity
– 4GB (2GB x2)
Speed
– DDR3-1600 (PC3 12800)
Test Voltage
– 1.65 Volts
Error Checking
– Non-ECC
Type
– 240-pin DIMM
Warranty
– Lifetime

Closer Look


Customary to Kingston memory packaging, the HyperX Special Edition arrives packaged within a tray with the specifications printed on the outer cover. This no frills approach to the packaging means that overall costs can be kept low which I have no qualms with.


Kingston HyperX Special Edition packaging

Removing the DIMMs from the packaging we can see that the heatsink design has changed slightly from the preceding HyperX kits. First of all the obvious difference, Kingston have moved away from the traditional blue and gone with a grey/silver colour-scheme. So this will complement a system that has a neutral colour configuration. The next significant difference is the heatsink design. Kingston have used aluminium for the heat spreaders and there are 24 pierced holes on either side for heat dissipation. The “HyperX” typography and silver “X” that spreads across the heat spreaders have been given a glossy, machine cut corrugation. This looks and feels great. It gives the DIMMs some elegance and style.

I am really pleased that Kingston have remained consistent with their HyperX kit by ensuring the heatspreaders provide a low-profile. A mere 1mm extension on the memory DIMMs can be found on the HyperX Special Edition’s which is fantastic, there will be no issues with CPU compatibility that’s for sure. So overall height on this kit is 2.8cm – the lowest you will find from any performance RAM.

As is expected each stick has the label with the serial number and voltage. Unfortunately though the CAS timings aren’t present which is odd. Incidentally though, this kit may not physically show the CAS details but because they are XMP we can channel into this data within the BIOS easily.





Test Setup & Overclocking


CPU Intel Core i5 2500K (3.3GHz)
Motherboard ASUS P8P67
Memory
4GB Kingston HyperX Special Edition 1600MHz 9-9-9-27
4GB G.Skill RipjawsX 1600MHz 7-8-7-24
4GB OCZ Reaper 1600MHz 8-8-8-26
CPU Cooler Alpenfohn Matterhorn
Graphics ZOTAC GTX 460
PSU OCZ Fatal1ty 750W

For the purpose of testing I will be using the Kingston kit and all subsequent Sandy Bridge memory on the ASUS P8P67 motherboard, using the Intel 2500K . Our database is now growing for Sandy Bridge memory reviews, so over time there will be more memory to compare against. But for now, we will be testing versus OCZ Reaper and the recently reviewed G.Skill RipjawsX.


HyperX Special Edition installed on the ASUS P8P67 / testbench


Overclocking

With BCLK being fixed on the Sandy Bridge platform this has now altered the way we can overclock. Overclocking power with Sandy Bridge is concentrated on the CPU rather than memory. We do not have the flexibility we once had by changing the BCLK in order to move the frequencies in small increments, instead we have a certain margin to move in because of the divider that is set. So available we have 1066MHz / 1600MHz / 1866MHz / 2133MHz / 2400MHz. So we have little room to experiment with, but lets see what we can do.

So to begin with I overclocked the kit pushing the memory frequency up to 2111MHz and very loose CAS timings of 10-10-10-28 but as you would imagine, pushing a kit from 1600MHz to 2111MHz is a challenging task to say the least. Unfortunately, but as expected, the kit would not boot.

From here I then dropped the kit back to 1866MHz which it was very comfortable with. After some modifying of the timings I eventually settled with 9-10-9-25 @ 1.65v. Whilst the timings aren’t as tight as I would have liked, for a C9 stock kit these ratings are still impressive.

The next objective was to modify the CAS timings at the stock memory frequency of 1600MHz. The idea here is to get the timings as tight as possible and the lowest ratings that I could settle on were 8-9-8-25 @ 1.65v. Quite a significant improvement over the stock ratings there.

So with both the memory frequency overclock in place and the tightened CAS timings at stock memory frequency achieved I then began benchmarking each variable. The results are on the proceeding pages. To summarise here are the settings we will be testing on the HyperX Special Edition:

Stock: 1600MHz 9-9-9-27 @ 1.65v
Tight: 1600MHz 8-9-8-25 @ 1.65v
OC: 1866MHz 9-10-9-25 @ 1.65v

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.


STOCK 1600MHz 9-9-9-27 @ 1.65v



TIGHT 1600MHz 8-9-8-25 @ 1.65v



OVERCLOCK 1866MHz 9-10-9-25 @ 1.65v






SiSoftware SANDRA 2011

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.






3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. 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.




Games: Metro 2033, DIRT 2, UT3, Black Ops

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because the Kingston HyperX will surely feature in many gaming systems. HyperX are designed for hardware enthusiasts and gamers.







Conclusion


Performance-wise Sandy Bridge has been a phenomenal achievement for Intel. Many have moved across to this new platform in order to reap the performance gains that are to be had. So if you are pondering a move to Sandy Bridge its important to consider the memory kit you feed the system. Overclocking has changed quite dramatically. We can now only move in small increments in terms of memory overclock because of the fixed BCLK, so if you are wanting to overclock then its important to choose a decent kit a combination of good memory frequency, low latency and voltage is a wise consideration.

The Kingston HyperX Special Edition kit is designed specifically for the Intel P67 chipset (Sandy Bridge) and comes with XMP support. If you have read this review you will be aware that this memory performs superbly for a CL9 rated kit. The gaming benchmarks may have revealed a nominal improvement over the other kits and overclocking increase but within the synthetic tests there are some significant results to contemplate.

Physically, the HyperX Special Edition kit continues to provide you with an extremely low profile. The heat spreaders are going to be the shortest you will ever come across. A mere 1mm extension over the standard height of the DIMMs underlines just how compatible this kit will be with CPU coolers currently on the market. If you can’t fit a CPU cooler on your motherboard with the HyperX Special Edition, you aren’t going to be able to fit the cooler with any other ram per se.



The highlight though surely has to be the price. Retailing at just £40 Inc. VAT the HyperX Special Edition kit (1600MHz) is an absolute steal. Such a low cost makes this kit one of the most affordable kits designed for Sandy Bridge currently on the market.

The bottom line is: if you are thinking about moving to Sandy Bridge and are on a tight budget then I would urge you to invest in a Kingston HyperX Special Edition kit. They are low-cost, offer excellent performance, look great and are extremely low profile. Can you tell I’m impressed?

Pros
+ Excellent performance
+ XMP
+ Amazing value
+ Sleek & elegant
+ Lowest profile heatspreaders
+ Lifetime warranty

Cons
– There are none





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