Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB DDR3-2133 Memory Kit Review

By Hank Tolman

Manufacturer: Kingston Technology Corporation
Product Name: HyperX Beast
Model Number: KHX21C11T3K2/16X
UPC: 740617213621
Price As Tested: $147.99 (Newegg | Amazon)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Kingston.

Some of the most difficult to answer questions in the enthusiast and high-end gaming PC world have to do with RAM, and more specifically with RAM clock speeds, latency, and timings. What differences do all of these make when it comes to better performance and higher frame rates in games? Typically, the answer is that they do very little when it comes to games. AMD has sought to change that answer with the release of their Richland series APUs, which are designed to take even more advantage of RAM speeds and support up to 2133MHz clock speeds. Intel’s Haswell now supports speeds of up to 1600MHz. Now that more is being done to increase the performance gain from higher RAM speeds, let’s take a look at the results. Here at Benchmark Reviews, we have a couple of new high-speed RAM kits to review. In this article, we will be taking a look at the Kingston HyperX 8GBx2 DDR3-2133 KHX21C11T3K2/16X kit.

The KHX21C11T3K2/16X DRAM Kit comes clocked at 2133MHz. Kingston’s HyperX series is focused toward enthusiasts, overclockers who need extra heat dissipation to push their components and fast as they’ll go. The kit we received is clocked perfectly to take advantage of the AMD A10-6800K APU support for 2133MHz RAM, but it also comes with the XMP profiles to fit right in on an Intel platform. The KHX21C11T3K2/16X, according to Kingston, is capable of running anywhere from 1333MHz up to 2133MHz and it seems like there may be some upward potential as well. The price seems to be set just right as well, with only a few dollars difference between the speeds for the Kingston HyperX Beast series.

First things first, let’s check out the specs on the Kingston HyperX Beast Series and the KHX21C11T3K2/16X.

• Capacities 8GB–64GB (with 8GB, 16GB and 64GB kits)
• Speeds of up to 2400MHz
• 1.5V & 1.65 V operating voltages enable stable overclocking
• Compatible with Intel XMP auto-overclocking function
• Designed to work with P55, H67, P67, Z68, H61 (AG), X79 and Z77 Intel chipsets; as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78 and E35 (Fusion) AMD chipsets
• Carefully selected premium chips for maximum performance and overclockability
• Vicious black heat spreader with matching black PCB
• 100-percent factory tested