INTRODUCTION

   Compared to well over a decade ago when we just had but a few memory chip manufacturers nowadays more and more brands keep emerging most of which just rebrand memory chips from the leading manufacturers in the field and ship them to the market as their own (oldest trick in the book). Kingston was one of the very first memory chip manufacturers i got to know pretty well during the 90's right next to Intel, Viking, GoldStar (LG now) and Nanya so after using their products for roughly 2 decades i know exactly what to expect in terms of quality, performance and after sales support. However although they've been making memory kits for over 2 decades it wasn't until 10 years ago that they introduced their HyperX line of products aimed specifically towards enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. So today we are going to be testing the HyperX 16GB DDR3 2400MHz CL11 quad channel memory kit (KHX24C11X3K4/16X) which was designed specifically to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of their HyperX product line.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s independent memory leader. Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones. In 2009, the company's sales reached $4.1 billion. With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, Kingston’s tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston’s success. Kingston serves an international network of distributors, resellers, retailers and OEM customers on six continents. The company also provides contract manufacturing and supply chain management services for semiconductor manufacturers and system OEMs. 

   Now as many of you know we did celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the HyperX line of products by Kingston roughly two weeks ago when we gave away one HyperX 16GB DDR3 2400MHz CL11 quad channel memory kit (KHX24C11X3K4/16X) and two DataTraveler Ultimate G3 32GB USB 3.0 flash drives. Of course the original idea when we launched that giveaway was for us to complete the review of the kit we had here prior to having a brand new one sent to the prize winner but things don't always go as planned and it took us a bit longer. So the 10th Anniversary Limited line includes XMP compatible dual (4/8GB) and quad channel (16/32GB) memory kits clocked from 1600MHz and up to 2400MHz with the KHX24C11X3K4/16X placed at the top. More specifically the KHX24C11X3K4/16X 16GB Quad Channel Kit we have here today features two Intel XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) profiles, one set at 2400MHz (CL11-13-13, 1.65V) and one at 2133MHz (CL11-12-12, 1.65V) for mainboards that may not be stable enough at 2400MHz (luckily our Gigabyte X79-UD7 had no issue with that). However since we previously tested the HyperX Genesis 2133MHz CL11 Quad Channel Kit naturally i didn't expect a huge performance increase from the extra 267MHz but was i right on the spot? 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE KHX24C11X3K4/16X 10TH ANNIVERSARY KIT

Being a 10th Anniversary limited edition kit doesn't mean special treatment and so Kingston ships it inside the same clamshell package as their other quad channel kits with two stickers at the top, one with the Intel XMP logos and one which includes information such as the kit number, size, barcode and country of manufacture.

The four memory modules and the usual warranty and installation guide are placed inside the box.

For their 10th Anniversary Limited Edition kit Kingston dropped the black/silver and blue/silver color combinations used with their other HyperX kits and decided to use just silver. Personally i don't care much about color since inside a tower you hardly ever see the memory modules however i was glad to see that Kingston used a low-profile heat spreader for zero clearance issues.

Being part of the HyperX line the logo is placed on the far left side.

The X in the middle along with the HyperX 10 Years logo however are specific to these models (at least for now).

As usual on the other side we see a small sticker with the product number, batch line, country of manufacture and voltage requirements.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

    Whenever we get to test a hardware peripheral that its performance is measurable we always like comparing it with similar products (past and present) just to see how well it stands its ground against them and in order to give you the best and most accurate results possible we use several methods including 5 different benchmarking programs/suites and 1 game. The benchmarking programs used are the well-known AID64 Extreme Engineer Edition (formerly known as Everest Ultimate), the Sisoftware Sandra Pro version, the old but quite reliable ScienceMark 64Bit and the all-time classic SuperPi 1.5. As for the game we chose one that can hit very high FPS to better showcase even the slightest increase/decrease in performance between memory kits and so we are using Tom Clancy's HAWX II. As usual all tests were performed inside Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with all updates installed up to March 6^th 2013.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO

TEST RESULTS - SCIENCEMARK / SUPER PI

TEST RESULTS - HAWX II

CONCLUSION

   When you've tested as many memory kits as i or many others have you know that just a few MHz more will not give you much of a performance boost (if at all) especially in games and that applies to every memory kit out there. However things change when we are talking about overall system performance and that's where the latest Kingston HyperX 10th Anniversary 2400MHz 16GB Quad Channel Kit nailed it since it proved to be almost 10% faster (overall) compared to the HyperX 2133MHz Genesis kit. Of course architecture, CAS latency, timings and memory size also matters and so as shown in some of our charts Triple Channel kits have little to be jealous of Quad Channel Kits in synthetic benchmarks but when it comes to games things change once again (mainly however due to the different processing power between LGA1366 and LGA2011). Unfortunately overclocking the kit was not really not possible since at 2400MHz it was pretty much already maxed out (we did manage to hit 2460MHz but that wasn't enough to use) and that’s perhaps the only slight drawback we could find.

   With a current price tag of just USD159.99 inside the USA (Amazon/Newegg) and at around 150Euros inside the EU the HyperX 10th Anniversary Limited Edition 2400MHz 16GB CL11 Quad Channel Kit (KHX24C11X3K4/16X) is a real bargain since it offers great performance with no clearance issues thanks to the low-profile heat spreaders and hassle-free installation thanks to the two available XMP profiles. Now i would like to see something a bit unique for packaging and perhaps more overclocking headroom but both would probably be reason enough for Kingston to increase the price tag so those i can live without. So thumbs up to Kingston both for manufacturing a very good quad channel kit and for receiving our Platinum Award.

 PROS

- Quality
- Low Profile Heatspreders
- Quad Channel
- Performance
- 16GB
- XMP Profiles
- 10th Anniversary Limited Edition 

CONS

- No Overclock Headroom (For Some)