Kingston HyperX Beast Final Thoughts

RAM is a tricky component. It is one of the fundamental components of a computer and the price of RAM is better than ever. With 64-bit operating systems really becoming the standard, most desktop and laptop systems now come with more than 4GBs of RAM. Newer chipsets are also supporting much faster RAM than ever before, which is why we’ve seen an influx of high-speed RAM kits hitting the markets. The price gaps between the speeds are becoming smaller and smaller, making it easier to justify getting those faster DIMMs.

In fact, with DDR4 being shown off at CES this year and potentially making a debut in mobile platforms by the end of the year, we should see speeds increasing even more while prices continue to drop. DDR4 memory will effectively double the speed of DDR3 memory from the get go and individual modules will also increase in size. In addition, DDR4 will significantly decrease power consumption. Don’t expect to see DDR4 modules in desktop systems until 2014, which significant market adoption a few years later. Intel’s roadmap has DDR4 being introduced with Haswell-E.

But that doesn’t happen until next year, at the soonest. The real question is, for now, does it make sense to spend a little extra on faster RAM? As we have seen in our tests, increased RAM speed, when paired with AMD’s latest APUs, does translate into slightly faster performance both in synthetic benchmarks and in games. The difference isn’t huge, but it could be worth it. I say that because the price differences between the slower and faster RAM modules is now lower than ever.

With the Kingston HyperX Beast RAM kits, there is not much standing between the different speeds of the RAM kits. With the prices so close, I’d probably go for the fastest possible kit. For the HyperX Beast series, that means 2400MHz. While the increase in performance isn’t amazing, I think it justifies a few extra dollars of expense.

Of course, that recommendation only goes if you are in the market for an entirely new RAM kit. If you are upgrading the RAM you have to increase the amount, I’d stick with the speed you have, as long as it is DDR3-1066MHz or above. Also be sure to get the same timings as your existing RAM, preferably the same model for the best compatibility. If you are going for a completely new kit, go as fast as you can before the price differences start to makes it unjustifiable. For the Kingston HyperX Beast kits, I’d call it at 2400MHz.