Introduction
Kingston Technology Company, located in Fountain Valley, California, is the worlds largest
independent memory manufacturer. They are involved in nearly every stage of the production process,
from cutting the PCB to testing the modules. Kingston has long been known to be responsible
for some of the finest quality RAM on the market; although in the past they have never been
known for high performance products.
Kingston plans to break that mold with its new line of HyperX modules. HyperX is available now
in speeds from PC2700 to PC3500 (333MHz and 424MHz respsectively). These extremely high rated chips
are targetted at the enthusiast/gamer market and boast stability and impressive performance. Today
we will take a look at their fastest offering on the market – the KHX3500/512, their 512MB PC3500
module.
I’ve been watching Kingston for a long time, and this is the first chip I have purchased from
Module Specifications
| Product: | Kingston HyperX PC3500 DDR SDRAM (KHX3500) |
| Package: | Dual-bank 512MB 184-pin Unbuffered DDR Module |
| PCB Height: | 1.200″ (30.48mm) |
| Voltage: | 2.5v @ DDR434 |
| Default Clock: | 434MHz |
| Default Timings: | 2-3-3-7-1 (CAS Latency 2) |
| Memory Chips: | Winbond 5ns |
So, this stuff looks pretty impressive on paper. The module itself doesn’t look half bad either;
the HyperX series sport a cool blue heat spreader with a white HyperX logo on the front:
 |
 |
Referring to the label affixed the the heatspreader we can see this module is rated at 2.5V, PC3500
(Double pumped 217MHz or DDR434). Keep this in mind as we look at the modules performance.
You’ll also notice “ASSY IN USA”, further proof that Kingston does indeed manufacture these chips
themselves in the USA.
You might be asking what the difference between this and any other PC3500 module is. Most
manufacturers of high-end RAM are using Winbond chips anyway. I think it’s worth mentioning some of the other benefits of going
Kingston. Kingston has been around for a long time, and they are a dedicated and customer serving
company. If you buy any stick of HyperX, it is automatically covered under a lifetime warranty
and you also have access to technical support, 24/7, toll-free. It’s this kind of reputation and
company values that make me really consider a product. Beyond performance, having a company
who will back up their product is a grand thing indeed.
Due to hardware restraints I won’t be able to test this module in full by giving it the kind of voltage
we need to see max speeds. Updating this article a year later, I can say this module was a decent overclocker
and had great performance, but it did flatten out with voltage under heavy load. Serious cooling
could stretch this sucker pretty far though.
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