Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 Kit Review

Introduction With every type of product there's always a particular brand or SKU that rules the roost, that pushes the boundaries in terms of quality and performance. In the world of desktop computer memory there are a few of these: Corsair's Dominator Platinum and G.Skill's RipJaws are a couple of examples but today we have one of the most established and prestigious: Kingston's HyperX Predator series. The Predator name doesn't just get put onto any old memory module: Kingston reserve it for the craziest frequencies, the highest quality cherry picked and speed binned SKUs and to top it all off there's a whopping great big heatsink to keep things running cool. The specific kit we have today operates at a crazy 3000MHz, or 3GHz, and remember this is just the memory. That means the memory operates at the same frequency as the Core i7 5960X's base frequency - crazy! Due to the super high frequency this kit also comes with a large heat spreader to tame the high 1.5 volts needed and it also comes with a high price tag which we'll get onto later. First let's go over the specifications of this product: Specifications Edit: Kingston have informed us that due to feedback that are lowering the voltage of their HyperX Predator DDR4 2400-3000MHz range from 1.5 to 1.35 volts. A Closer Look Kingston's HyperX Predator didn't arrive with us in any retail packaging, just inside a brown card box with some plastic cases for the modules. The modules are something special though - look how big they are! There's an extra inch of heatsink over the top of the PCB for a total height of about 55mm - you're going to need closed loop liquid cooling or a slim heatsink to use this RAM. Motherboard Installation Pictures Inside any motherboard the Kingston HyperX Predator looks down-right awesome. On their own these modules are show-stoppers so when they are paired up with a swanky X99 motherboard they look even better. They might not have the sophistication of Corsair's Dominator Platinum range, but they certainly have more "oomph" (or should that be they "make an Impact"....HyperX Impact...get it....ah never mind..). Red and Black Motherboards - ASUS Rampage V Extreme Orange and Black Motherboards - Gigabyte X99 UD4 Yellow and Black Motherboards - MSI X99S XPower AC Test System and Procedure Methods & Tests In our RAM reviews we keep things relatively simple. We put the RAM kit that is being tested into our test system and we benchmark it at its primary XMP profile using a variety of benchmarks and tests. Once complete we then overclock the kit to see how far we can push it in raw frequency terms, then benchmark it again using the same combination of tests with a CPU-Z validation of the overclock. Cinebench R15 Multi-threaded Test AIDA64 Engineer Edition Memory Bandwidth and Latency Test SiSoft Sandra Tech Support (Engineer) Memory Bandwidth Test WPrime 32M Calculation Test 3DMark Fire Strike Physics Test Test System #1 (Intel Z97 DDR3) Motherboard - Asus Maximus VII Ranger Z97 Processor - Intel Core i7 4770K at Stock With Turbo Enabled RAM - Varies By Review Graphics Card - Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Graphics Card CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Power Supply - Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W Main Storage Drive - Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD over SATA III interface Chassis - Lian Li T60 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Test System #2 (Intel X99 DDR4) Motherboard - Asus Rampage V Extreme X99 Processor - Intel Core i7 5960X at Stock With Turbo Enabled RAM - Varies By Review Graphics Card - Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Graphics Card CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Power Supply - Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive - Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD over SATA III interface Chassis - Lian Li T60 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to: Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4770K processor, which we reviewed here, and a Core i7 5960X processor, which we reviewed here. Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here. Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here. Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here, and a Power Zone 1000W power supply unit, which we reviewed here. Sapphire for supplying us with an AMD R9 290 Tri-X graphics card, which we reviewed here. ASUS for supplying us with a Maximus VII Ranger Z97 Motherboard, which we reviewed here, and a Rampage V Extreme Motherboard, which we will have reviewed soon. Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench. Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound. Software Used SiSoft Sandra Tech Support Engineer AIDA 64 Engineer 3DMark WPrime CPU-Z Overclocking and Performance The Overclock When we overclock memory kits in our reviews we go for all out frequency, this is primarily done by tweaking the DRAM frequency presets in the BIOS. Once we top out at the highest stable frequency divider we see if any more frequency can be had by increasing the baseclock, or by changing the baseclock (particular relevant for X99). Typically we set timings as the JEDEC profile recommendations for the frequency we are going for, if this does not work we allow auto-timings to be calculated by the motherboard. Normally we will only make small adjustments to the BCLK and timings to keep the system stable, we will also not use more than 1.65 volts for DDR3 and 1.5 volts for DDR4 as this is not recommended for 24/7 operation. At 3000MHz I was genuinely worried if our CPU even had the Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) capable of running this RAM. Thankfully it did, dialing in the XMP profile worked a treat so we thought why not push a bit further and see what happens? That's exactly what we did and we didn't get much further, an extra 100MHz by tweaking the base clock from 125MHz to 166MHz. However, just look at those results!!! That tiny overclock produced solid performance gains on top of what was already the fastest memory kit we've seen. Over 70,000 MB/s in AIDA64's copy test...holy ****! Cinebench CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s CPU performance. Cinebench R15 is a totally free utility and is available for download here. Cinebench is fairly sensitive to changes in memory frequency and timings. AIDA64 AIDA64 implements a set of 64-bit benchmarks to measure how fast the computer performs various data processing tasks and mathematical calculations. Memory and cache benchmarks are available to analyze system RAM bandwidth and latency. A free version of AIDA64 is available for download here. SiSoft Sandra The SiSoft Sandra memory benchmark is based on STREAM. STREAM is a popular memory bandwidth benchmark that has been used on personal computers to super computers. It measures sustained memory bandwidth not burst or peak. Therefore, the results may be lower than those of other benchmarks. Download a free trial version of SiSoft Sandra here. WPrime wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions. wPrime is a free utility that is available for download here. WPrime is influenced by memory timings and frequency. 3DMark Fire Strike 3DMark Firestrike is Futuremark’s latest creation for testing the GPU performance of high end gaming PCs using Direct X 11 graphics. You can download a free basic version of 3DMark here. We use only the Physics score as this is most sensitive to memory frequency and timing changes. Final Thoughts Pricing (accurate at the time of writing) Kingston's HyperX Predator 3000MHz 16GB kit costs £349.99 at Overclockers in the UK on pre-order. We haven't been able to find it listed anywhere else but we can infer U.S pricing of around $450-500. Kingston supply a lifetime warranty with this product. Summary Edit: Kingston have informed us that due to feedback that are lowering the voltage of their HyperX Predator DDR4 2400-3000MHz range from 1.5 to 1.35 volts. When you come across a product like this there's always a tough value-judgment to be made at the end. There are two main thought schools with these types of extreme performance products that have extreme price tags to match. The first, which I know that one of our prolific readers will most definitely agree with, is that this product is for the individual whose head is disconnected from their wallet. That may well be true to an extent but the flip side of the coin is that these kinds of products do something beneficial for us all: they drive forward new standards of performance for everyone but they also offer the absolute best of the best to those who need it, or just want it. Kingston's HyperX Predator does exactly that: it offers crazy memory performance at a fairly nutty price. Yet I can't help but notice that equivalent frequency kits from some other brands can be a lot more expensive so Kingston still offer a better value proposition than some. My opinion on this particular kit is that the X99 platform is already eyewateringly expensive, so if you're building a crazily expensive system anyway you might as well do it properly and get an epic kit like this one! Don't you agree? Pros Best-in-class performance Great looks and high quality construction Lifetime warranty Cons Very expensive Tall heatsinks may cause compatibility issues High frequency doesn't scale in many real world applications (at least not yet....) "If you're looking for the absolute best that current DDR4 can offer, and you don't mind paying a pretty penny for it, then Kingston's HyperX Predator memory is a brilliant choice. Great looks and best-in-class performance make it a true enthusiast-grade product." Thank you to Kingston providing this review sample.