Closer Look

Similar to specifications, the packaging also remains unchanged; it is a typical Kingston-esque combination of plastic tray and transparent cover.



Looking at the messy module design, it seems that Kingston were trying something new just for the sake of trying something new. With these looks and the mix of green and black, one has to have a very specific build theme for the Beast to blend in, or simply not care about the looks at all.
Rumor has it; there is a version with black PCB in the pipeline. However, our own insider claims that it’s not very likely to be produced in large numbers as, at Kingston, binning takes place after module assembly and there is simply no demand for black-PCB rejects in Kingston’s main OEM customer circles.



Judging on the performance component of the heatspreaders, it seems that things went a tad downhill for Kingston as stuff stuck on the Beast has nowhere near the mass nor the surface area of ones used on the T1 series not too long ago. Certainly, this allows to cut production costs and with Kingston being a value-oriented manufacturer, we can’t see much too irrational in this decision.




With both sides of modules populated, a simple procedure of popping off the heatspreaders reveals that our sample of 2400C11 is based on a modification of Hynix 4Gbit memory ICs commonly referred to as MFR. Having recently seen the same stuff being used on much slower versions of Beast and yet still fail to achieve specifications, we hope that Kingston put more effort into binning the ICs for their flagship 8Gb/module model.



SPD chip on the 2400C11 version of Kingston’s Beast features information on the model and manufacturing date of the modules. It is also flashed with four JEDEC and two XMP profiles (DDR3-2400 with specs and DDR3-2133 as a backup) that are meant to make life easier when it comes to making memory work out of the box.

---

Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Closer Look

Page 3 - Photo Gallery

Page 4 - Results

Page 5 - Conclusion

Discuss this article in the forums