Kingston HyperX Dual Channel 2133Mhz CL9 Memory Review

When building a system the component choices can often be a limiting factor, both in price and performance.  Luckily memory manufactures have gotten better about creating specialized memory kits specific for any one particular system.  In this review we looked at a dual channel DDR3 memory kit from Kingston called the HyperX.  The HyperX brand is quite old and well known to provide solid performance at any speed which is something we noticed in this review.

Our HyperX modules are a little unique in that they are the first ones we have seen with a standard profile heatspreader.  Most enthusiast modules we have seen are quite tall to provide better cooling and street appeal.  We did notice that these modules run warmer than some of the other modules we have tested which could mean that either the chips are working harder or that the heatspreader is actually making good contact.
 
As a general rule of thumb you will see a significant performance increase whenever you can run your memory clock above the default 13.33x multiplier setting and is what you will get from these modules.  While the Kingston HyperX modules we tested may not have the best timings their overall performance is perfect for gaming and general purpose computing. 

We have run into an interesting situation with these modules where the best performance came from the default speed settings using the faster XMP profile.  Once we started overclocking our processor performance went up along with an expected boost in memory bandwidth.  Yet, what we didn't expect to see is lower performance in our gaming benchmarks.  This tells us that our Kingston HyperX modules have been tuned for their rated speeds and simply aren't setup for mild overclocking. 

High Speed Memory Modules
Lightweight Heatspreader
Dual XMP Profiles
Sandy Bridge Specific Memory
Best Results at Rated Speeds

CAS 9 Timings
Not able to adjust timings at speed