ocaholic - Memory > DDR3 > Kingston HyperX Beast 2x8GB DDR3-1866 CL10 1.5V Review

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Closer Look

Our Beast arrived contained in a package made up of the usual black tray and a transparent cover.

It is not hard to see how the memory got its name. Albeit heatspreader design actually looks somewhat uncivilised, we are not certain whether the current two-color appearance is what potential customers might find attractive. That said, the green PCB is promised to be soon making way for a black one, in which case the all-black look could make these a lot more interesting.

Unlike T1 heatspreaders of the older days, the ones put on the Beast are much less complicated. For a start, these are made of simple sheet aluminium and as a consequence the modules are now significantly lighter and feature a lot less surface area for the heat to escape. To scalp these off the modules, one has to deal with a strip of thermal tape on either side, which would let loose without putting up any big fight.

Surprisingly, the heatspreaders have revealed that our 1866C10 sample is based on Hynix’s 4Gbit memory ICs commonly referred to as MFR, which at the moment are the only chips of such density known to be capable of operating at DDR3-2600 and above.
With production volumes that Kingston have to deal with, we cannot predict for how long the 1866C10 model is going remain based on MFR, but if you happen to get one of these kits at a later date – there is a way of telling whether your kit is Hynix-based without breaking the seal on the package. Take a look at the vertical code printed on each of the modules; if fourth symbol is H then you have Hynix and it is very likely to be MFR.

SPD chip on the 1866C10 version of Kingston’s Beast features information on the model and manufacturing date of the modules. It is also flashed with six JEDEC and two XMP profiles that are meant to make life easier when it comes to making memory work out of the box.
What we found interesting is that despite being sold as a matched kit, the modules have a five-week delta between production dates. With the same chips being used to produce higher-rated memory modules, we reckon that 1866C10 bin is blindly comprised of modules that have either failed higher specifications or were simply found excessive.

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 F4)
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770K ES @ 4.0 GHz
Graphic card	ASUS GTX 580
Memory	Kingston HyperX Beast KHX18C10T3K2/16X
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 one can set, very few people actually do base clock (BCLK) overclocking on 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 16 GB kit, we use eight 1500 MB instances and call things stable if we see all of them to go past 100% 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 is left for the motherboard and SPD to agree on.

Results

As typical for Hynix MFR-based memory, raising the voltage has the biggest affect on the CAS latency by allowing to run potentially lower values. The rest of the primary timings only react to voltage changes in borderline stability scenarios with the main parameter dictating lowest stable values being the memory frequency.
Comparing results to some of the MFR-based memory that we previously tested, first thing that springs into attention is the necessity to use relatively high tRP values on this particular kit. Ultimately, it translates into the inability of our review sample to operate at rated frequency of 933MHz using rated tRP 10, which is a major letdown.
On the plus side, the same kit had no issues to run as DDR3-2133 with 9-11-12-30 and DDR3-2400 with 11-12-13-32 at voltages acceptable for long-term use. We weren’t, however, able to crack the DDR3-2600 mark common for Hynix MFR but 40% overclocks are also not something to be expected out of every memory kit out there.

Page 4 - Results

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Conclusion

Looking up the current price for the 2x8 GB version of DDR3-1866 CL10 Beast via geizhals we see that offers start at 127 Euros excluding shipping across EU, which is 15-20% above price tags set to similarly-rated memory by GeIL and G.Skill. With Kingston offering no special features and only having distant remaints of enthusiast reputation to rely on, things do not look too optimistic.
By the look of things, the 1866C10 version of HyperX Beast series was designed to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But unfortunately, Kingston’s “trademark” inattentive binning can sometimes produce surprises that will outweigh the joy of discovering Hynix MFR on low-rated memory. Not being assisted by pricing or heatspreader quality as it used to be in the past, the Beast might have a hard time becoming an enthusiast bestseller.

Award

Even though we generally approve the idea of putting high-end rejects on low-rated memory, a lackluster execution turning in failed specs does not allow us to issue 2x8 GB version of Kingston HyperX Beast a rating of more than 2.5 stars.