ocaholic - Memory > DDR3 > Kingston HyperX Beast 4x8GB DDR3-2400 CL11 1.65V Review

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Closer Look

Similar to other four-module versions of the beast, the 2400C11 are served in a cardboard box that contains a pair of plastic trays holding two modules each.

What comes to the module styling, matte black is never a bad color to go with even though the overall appearance is slightly spoiled by leaving the PCB color at standard green. Kingston promise to have fixed this issue in the upcoming revisions of the Beast.

The mass and surface area of aluminium plates used by Kingston on the Beast as heatspreaders is nowhere near the paramater values of those being put on T1 series for ages. The grand plan behind such change, apparently, is to reduce the production costs, which is not the type of strategy one would like to notice being executed on the flagship models.

With the thermal tape out of the way, we see that our modules are based upon 4Gbit memory chips manufactured by Hynix, commonly referred to as MFR. Same chips have been in use on all three Kingston Beast models we have tested previously.

The SPD contains some basic information on the maker, model and the production date of the modules. It is also flashed with four JEDEC profiles designed to make things out of the box. Next to the XMP containing rated speed and timings, there is also an XMP with lower frequency, which might be helpful for those, whose platforms cannot run these Beast at full speed.

Page 2 - Closer Look

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Photo Gallery

Page 3 - Photo Gallery

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Testing Method & Test Setup

To test the overclocking capabilities of the memory we are going to use Intel’s recently released Haswell platform. As memory overclocks are known to vary between different motherboards, we are going to perform the tests using two different platforms to be sure that our numbers are reliable.

Motherboard	ASUS Maximus VI Gene (BIOS 0607) Gigabyte Z87X-OC (BIOS F5q)
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770K ES @ 4.0 GHz
Graphic card	ASUS GTX 580
Memory	Kingston HyperX Beast KHX24C11T3K4/32X
SSD	Samsung PM840 Pro
PSU	Seasonic Platinum 660 Watts
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Even though Haswell is very flexible on the memory frequency it is possible can set, very few people actually do base clock (BCLK) overclocking with their daily setups. Therefore, instead of our previous procedure of fixing the voltage and raising the frequency in 10MHz steps we are now going to fix the frequency and minimize the voltage in 0.01V steps.
As usual, our stability method of choice is HCI Memtest. Since we are dealing with a 32 GB kit, we use eight 2000 MB instances and call things stable if we see all of them to go past 150% without showing a single error.
Not to get things too complicated, we only set the primary timings, command rate (1T) and the memory voltage by hand while the rest of the settings are left for the motherboard and SPD to agree on.

Results

As usual, our goal is to see how memory reacts to voltage changes and in case with Hynix MFR this reaction translates in ability to run higher frequencies without having to raise the CAS latency. As to three other primary timings, the main factor for lowest stable values of those is frequency with voltage playing very little effect.
Speaking of end numbers, we couldn’t get over the rated 1200MHz regardless of timings and voltages tried with our Haswell setups, even after dropping two or three modules to get around IMC limitations. Yet, it was possible to run the Beast at DDR3-2400 at 10-12-11-30 and DDR3-2200 at 9-11-10-30 neither of which is a bad result for a 32 GB kit, which is usually not meant to be overclocked anyway.

Page 4 - Results

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Conclusion

Looking up the price for KHX24C11T3K4/32X via geizhals, we see a series of offers currently starting at 266 Euros excluding shipping across the EU. Comparing this price to the other 4x8 GB kits available, the Beast cannot be called the best purchase as there are cheaper Team Group and GeIL kits with same-or-better specifications available, furthermore, Kingston do not supply the Beast with any special accessories.
As Kingston’s current four-module flagship, the 32GB version of 2400C11 HyperX Beast will not dissapoint its potential buyers but is not a perfect product either. Being easily able to clear spec, if will not get much love amongst those who like to overclock. In addition, a couple more euros could have been spent for the heatspreaders put on the top product.

Award

Overall, we give the 32GB version a rating of four stars out of possible five.