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Memory prices have been dropping all year and there really has been no better time to pick up a tasty new kit of DDR3. If you are building a new computer, memory is critical in maximising the performance of the system. With this in mind we are looking at 8GB of high performance Kingston HyperX Beast 2,400mhz memory.
Kingston are one of the biggest memory companies and they have a wide portfolio of products targeting the enthusiast audience. The Beast memory features a new heatspreader which Kingston claims will “maximize thermal dissipation for increased reliability.” The memory has been specially designed to pair up with third generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors.
As this memory is competitively priced at only £45 inc vat on Amazon, we wanted to pair it up with a bargain priced Z77 motherboard – we selected the MSI Z77A-G45 which claimed our top award recently.
Features:-
- Capacity 8GB (2x4GB)
- Speed: 2400MHz
- CAS Latency: 11-13-13-31
- 1.55V-1.65V 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
Kingston packaging hasn't changed in years. They still use thin blister packs with the ram housed behind a clear plastic cover. Sadly a thick red HyperX sticker covers most of the memory behind, which is a shame as they look great.
Kingston don't include much in the package, just a little leaflet detailing their lifetime warranty.
Kingston are using their new black heatspreaders with the HyperX Beast memory sticks. The heatspreaders are larger than the PCB underneath, although they are a modest design, unlike some of their earlier products. It is a shame the PCB isn't black however to enhance the overall appearance.
Identity stickers are shown on one side of the sticks (KHX24CT11T3K2/8X) which indicate that this is a (2x4GB) 8GB kit. Latency is set to 11 and they are 1.65V rated.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
We are using the MSI Z77A-G45 motherboard with the latest bios. This motherboard is ideal as a partner for this memory, as it costs only £104.99 inc vat today.
The MSI Z77A G45 posted with the memory at 1,333mhz, a safe figure for a first post. The secondary XMP profile is set up at 2,133mhz with timings of 11-12-11-30 @ 1.6V. Not the tightest timings we have seen, but acceptable for the speed.
The primary XMP profile sets the memory to 2,400mhz with timings of 11-13-13-30 @ 1.65V. Kingston have loosened the timings significantly to get the 2,400mhz speeds. Overclocking this memory wasn't massively successful, we managed to get a 2,524mhz overclock with timings of [email protected]. The end result didn't reap any noticeable rewards, so we test today with XMP profile 1, as the majority of people will do who buy it.
System validation is available here.
Today we are using a system built around an Intel Core i7 3770k processor with an MSI Z77A-G45 motherboard.
Main Test System:
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666mhz
Graphics Card: MSI Lightning GTX680
Power Supply: Corsair 850W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN
Monitors: Dell U3011
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire
Comparison Memory System
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus V Formula.
Cooler: Corsair H100 Liquid Cooler.
Graphics card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition
Power supply: Corsair HX850
Boot drives: Intel 510 120GB
Storage drives: Patriot Wildfire 240GB & Samsung 2TB Storage drive.
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
8GB GeIL EVO Leggera 1866mhz
8GB Kingston HyperX Predator 2,666mhz
8GB Patriot Viper 3 Intel Masters Limited Edition 2,133mhz
8GB ‘generic’ 1600mhz CL9
8GB ‘generic’ 1333mhz CL9
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 comparison system:
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k.
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard.
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2.
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD.
Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB.
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 system comparison memory:
8GB Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz
8GB G.Skill TridentX 2400mhz
Software:
SiSoft Sandra
MaxxMem 2
Super Pi
Studio Max
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Native ports for all major operating systems are available:
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
- Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
- Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
- Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)
All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:
- SMP – Multi-Processor
- MC – Multi-Core
- SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
- MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
- GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
- NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
- AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
- IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit
Performance results are great, the memory almost hits a 30GB/s transfer rate, which is class leading for a dual channel memory kit.
MaxxMem2 PreView is a useful, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here.
A good score, in a similar zone to the Corsair Platinum 2666mhz.
V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.
Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.
Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.
Major new features:
- Slate: A node based material editor.
- Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
- Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
- 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
- Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
- Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
- Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
- Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
- Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
- FBX file linking
- Save to Previous Release (2010)
We created a new 6200×2400 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.
Good results, slightly outperforming the G.Skill TridentX 2,400mhz. The 2,666mhz Corsair Dominator Platinum leads the chart in this test however.
The HyperX Beast 2,400mhz memory is certainly a product that will strengthen Kingston's standing in the enthusiast sector.
Their move to a new black heatspreader can only be seen as positive, it is considerably smaller than their hugely oversized blue heatspreader adopted on many gaming grade products in recent years.
That said, the HyperX Beast heatspreader is still a little taller than similar designs adopted on competing products from G.Skill or Patriot, meaning some people with hugely oversized CPU coolers may still avoid the Kingston HyperX Beast.
Performance from this memory is commendable, particularly if you are going to be using the preconfigured XMP profile @ 2,400mhz. Kingston have also added an extra XMP profile as a safety precaution @ 2,133mhz just in case of potential incompatibility with slightly lower grade motherboards.
HyperX Beast timings may seem a little loose overall, but we can't say that performance was significantly impacted. The results are actually some of the best we have achieved to date.
The hardcore overclocking audience may want to look elsewhere as there is little headroom for manual performance tweaks. We did manage to get the memory stable at 2,524mhz although the timings needed to be loosened a little further which had a slightly negative impact on overall performance.
Kingston have clearly fine tuned this product to the limit of performance making it ideal for a wide user base. Hard core overclockers however may want to look at alternative options, such as G.Skill TridentX memory, which has hit well over 3,000mhz, or even the budget priced Samsung Green which can overclock to 2,800mhz with the right motherboard.
The buying decision has to be predominately based around the cost, and Amazon are currently selling 8GB of Kingston HyperX Beast for only £44.69 inc vat. At this price, there is no question it is exceptionally good value for money.
Pros:
- Heatspreader is an improvement.
- XMP profiles for both 2,133mhz and 2,400mhz.
- Great ‘out of box' performance.
Cons:
- Green PCB is ugly.
- very small overclocking headroom.
- loose timings
Kitguru says: A great memory kit at a very competitive price point. There is no shortage of competition for Kingston between £35 and £50 however.
