Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB, being a part of the newest high performance DDR4 line from the company, utilizes a set of low profile heatspreaders. The subtle black finish will not draw too much attention, but its aluminum pieces are distinctively shaped and molded to give it an aggressive stance. They look exactly the same as the Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB I reviewed in December 2014, albeit with a different color. Aluminum is lightweight, and serves as a decent heat conductor, while the toothed and ventilated heatsink design at the top improves air ventilation for faster heat dissipation (Although it is probably more for style in this particular application). Generally speaking, the HyperX Savage is not any taller than modules with no heatspreaders at all. This is useful for systems equipped with side mounted CPU heatsink fans adjacent to the memory slots, as the HyperX Savage will fit under virtually any cooler with sufficient clearance room. Whether you like to call it marketing gimmick or whatnot, it is almost impossible nowadays to find performance memory without any form of a heatspreader attached, haha. They do undeniably serve a purpose in dissipating heat, but for most memory modules, unless run at a voltage significantly over designed voltages -- which you will not, special thanks to integrated memory controllers on Intel processors -- this feature is certainly not a requirement. But I will admit they look pretty cool in any windowed chassis.
The heatspreader design of the Kingston HyperX Savage modules is asymmetrical when looked at straight on, but is symmetrical between sides, which is fairly logical, because memory ICs reside on both sides of the slick black PCB. Besides functional purposes, it also improves the look. The company's branding is printed directly onto the aluminum surfaces. There is no Kingston logo on the profile side, as they are establishing HyperX as an enthusiast brand itself in order to keep the Kingston name for business applications and whatnot. Meanwhile, a specification label is applied on the other side of each module. It lists the brand (HyperX), kit name (HX426C15SBK4/64), voltage (1.20V), and assembly location (Taiwan). Only here will you find a line that says "HyperX is a division of Kingston". Occupying the rest of the space is not the usual stuff like frequency and capacity, however. Instead, we can see a whole lot of seemingly random characters and numbers, in which I would assume at least one of them corresponds to its serial number.
As you can see more clearly in our photo above, the Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB has a very nice black PCB. Meanwhile, its heatspreader on top is composed of two separate pieces, which are interlinked by the two outermost clips at the top. The heatspreader is held to the module itself by a strip of thermally conductive adhesive, and each half part of the heatsink is aligned by a reciprocating teeth. The adhesive force between the two heatspreader and memory ICs is not particularly strong, but if you ever do take them off, keep your hair dryer around for a safer procedure.
From our above photo, it should also be clearer on how the heatspreaders are designed. The top edge is cast by a custom shaped mold on both pieces, and meets its corresponding section from the other half piece at the top for a complete mirror image. A series of teeth in varying sizes are located towards the center to give it a little bit of extra air ventilation room in this area. Since the pieces are made from fairly thin aluminum, it does not hold a lot of heat, therefore dissipating the heat energy relatively quickly into the surrounding environment. In the end, if you are going to be pushing your system to the limits with high memory voltages, the heatspreaders may be beneficial to improve system stability and overclocking potential (But you probably will not, thanks to Intel as aforementioned). Either way, you will never need to remove them, because it will definitely clear your processor heatsink, regardless of what you have.
A closer look at the memory chips on the Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB quad channel memory kit. The photo above should be quite clear -- it says "H5AN8G8NMFR" on each IC. These are SK Hynix manufactured chips, with eight 1GB chips on each side for a total of 16GB on each DIMM. They are quite similar to the ones found in the HyperX Fury HX426C15FBK4/32 4x8GB, except with twice the density. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR4-2666 with 15-15-15-35 latencies. They operate at a stock voltage of 1.20V, which is below the Core i3/i5/i7 maximum safe limit of 1.35V. Here is a table of specifications for the ICs, as obtained from Hynix's website:
- VDD=VDDQ=1.2V +/- 0.06V
- Fully differential clock inputs (CK, CK) operation
- Differential Data Strobe (DQS, DQS)
- On chip DLL align DQ, DQS and DQS transition with CK transition
- DM masks write data-in at the both rising and falling edges of the data strobe
- All addresses and control inputs except data, data strobes and data masks latched on the rising edges of the clock
- Programmable CAS latency 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 supported
- Programmable additive latency 0, CL-1, and CL-2 supported (x4/x8 only)
- Programmable CAS Write latency (CWL) = 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16
- Programmable burst length 4/8 with both nibble sequential and interleave mode
- BL switch on the fly
- 16banks
- Average Refresh Cycle (Tcase of 0 oC~ 95 oC)
-- 7.8 μs at 0oC ~ 85 oC
-- 3.9 μs at 85oC ~ 95 oC
- JEDEC standard 78ball FBGA(x4/x8)
- Driver strength selected by MRS
- Dynamic On Die Termination supported
- Two Termination States such as RTT_PARK and RTT_NOM switchable by ODT pin
- Asynchronous RESET pin supported
- ZQ calibration supported
- TDQS (Termination Data Strobe) supported (x8 only)
- Write Levelization supported
- 8 bit pre-fetch
- This product in compliance with the RoHS directive.
- Internal Vref DQ level generation is available
- Write CRC is supported at all speed grades
- Maximum Power Saving Mode is supported
- TCAR(Temperature Controlled Auto Refresh) mode is supported
- LP ASR(Low Power Auto Self Refresh) mode is sup-ported
- Fine Granularity Refresh is supported
- Per DRAM Addressability is supported
- Geardown Mode(1/2 rate, 1/4 rate) is supported
- Programable Preamble for read and write is supported
- Self Refresh Abort is supported
- CA parity (Command/Address Parity) mode is sup-ported
- Bank Grouping is applied, and CAS to CAS latency (tCCD_L, tCCD_S) for the banks in the same or differentbank group accesses are available
- DBI(Data Bus Inversion) is supported(x8)
Our test configuration as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.60GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 (Single fan)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Chassis: In Win 805
Storage: OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB; Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB; SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
Power: Seasonic Platinum 1000W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB @ DDR4-2666 15-15-15-35
- G.Skill Ripjaws V F4-2400C15D-32GVR 2x16GB @ DDR4-2400 15-15-15-35
- Kingston HyperX Fury HX426C15FBK4/32 4x8GB @ DDR4-2666 15-17-17-35
- Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 CPU
4. Benchmark: AIDA64 FPU
5. Benchmark: AIDA64 Memory
6. Benchmark: PCMark 8
7. Benchmark: 3DMark
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R15
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
