Page 2 - A Closer Look, Installation, Test System
The Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB, being a part of the newest high end performance DDR3 line from the company, utilizes a set of low profile heatspreaders. The bright red finish immediately grabs your attention, while the aluminum pieces are distinctively shaped and molded to give it an aggressive stance. 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 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. Interestingly, there is no Kingston logo on the profile side. Meanwhile, a specification label is applied on the other side of each module. It lists the brand (Kingston), kit name (HX324C11SRK2/16), voltage (1.65V), and assembly location (Taiwan). 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 HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB 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 curved inwards 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 teeth are made from very thin aluminum, it does not hold a lot of heat, therefore dissipating the heat energy relatively quickly into the surrounding environment. Despite using very thin aluminum, the short and simple design makes it quite ample in resisting bending forces. 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 HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB dual channel memory kit. The photo above should be quite clear -- it says "H5TC4G83BFR" on each IC. These are SK Hynix manufactured chips, with eight 512MB chips on each side for a total of 8GB on each DIMM. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR3-2400 with 11-13-14-32 latencies at 1T command rate. They operate at a stock voltage of 1.65V, which is right on the Core i3/i5/i7 maximum safe limit of 1.65V. Here is a table of specifications for the ICs, as obtained from Hynix's website:
- VDD=VDDQ=1.35V + 0.100 / - 0.067V
- 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 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 supported
- Programmable additive latency 0, CL-1, and CL-2 supported
- Programmable CAS Write latency (CWL) = 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
- Programmable burst length 4/8 with both nibble sequential and interleave mode
- BL switch on the fly
- 8banks
- Average Refresh Cycle (Tcase of 0 oC~ 95oC)
- - 7.8 µs at 0oC ~ 85 oC
- - 3.9 µs at 85oC ~ 95 oC
- JEDEC standard 78ball FBGA(x4/x8)
- Driver strength selected by EMRS
- Dynamic On Die Termination supported
- 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.
Our test configuration as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U14S (2x Noctua NF-A15)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 2GB OC
Chassis: SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E (Noctua NF-S12A PWM, Noctua NF-P12 PWM)
Storage: SanDisk Extreme II 240GB; OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional
Compared Hardware:
- Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB @ DDR3-2400 11-13-14-32
- Kingston HyperX Beast KHX21C11T3K2/16X 2x8GB @ DDR3-2133 11-12-11-30
- Kingston HyperX Predator KHX18C9T2K2/16X 2x8GB @ DDR3-1866 9-10-9-27
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Installation, 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
