HyperX Predator DDR4 3000Mhz CL15 Quad Channel Memory Review

As with all of our reviews we pit the default speed system against the overclocked one in a head to head byte match. The results of this are shown below. The effective overclock here is 3.8Ghz with a standard BCLK of 100Mhz with a resulting memory clock of 3200Mhz.  That is a modest overclock of 200Mhz over the rated speed with virtually no change to the CPU clock or memory voltage.

Is it possible for an overclock to actually be slower than running with stock clocks?  Based on these results the answer is, Yes. 

The interesting thing about these modules is that they were relatively easy to overclock but didn’t respond well to BLCK adjustments.  BCLK is a product of the CPU so while our Core i7 5960X didn’t do well that isn’t to say that is the case for all of them.  Another factor is the motherboard BIOS, we tried to run these modules on the Gigabyte X99 SOC Force and whenever XMP was enabled the board would fail at POST.  Updating the BIOS didn't fix the situation so we switched to the EVGA X99 Classified and after a BIOS flash the modules worked wonderfully.  The EVGA BIOS only supported modules up to 3000Mhz so it is a wonder we could attain a 3200Mhz overclock and still remain stable.

Another thing to note is that while the BIOS may not have supported 3200Mhz we did get the memory multipler to activate but only if the BCLK strap was at 100Mhz.  Changing this to 125Mhz would give us more memory multiplier options but also caused the system to crash at POST. 

It would appear we are left waiting for the motherboard makers to allow us overclocking support past 3000Mhz and if the apparent EOL of their flagship X99 SOC Force some six months after the launch is any indication, it might be a long wait.