Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3-1866 2X4GB Memory Kit Review

Kingston sent along one of their newly released HyperX Fury memory kits for us to have a look at. This particular kit is the white version of the DDR3-1866 MHz 2X4 GB kit they will be offering in a variety of heatspreader colors. The HyperX Fury line will replace the entry level HyperX Blu memory products and is geared towards the beginner enthusiast and gamer. The Fury line of memory will position itself between the HyperX Genesis and high-end HyperX Predator. Kingston aims to give an attractive and affordable option to those users who find themselves wanting a little more than an entry level product, but don’t require a top-of-the-line memory offering. Sounds like a great idea to me, so let’s have a look!

Specifications/Features/Product Tour

Our sample arrived earlier than any product information became available on Kingston’s website, but here is what we received via e-mail as far as specifications and features.

• PNP: Plug and Play automatically overclocks the memory up to the system maximum specs.
• Capacities: 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz, 1866 MHz
• CAS Latency: 9,10.
• Voltage: 1.5 V
• Heatspreader: Stylish and aggressive in white/black/blue/red.
• PCB Color: Black
• Reliable: 100% tested.
• Guaranteed: Lifetime warranty.

Once the memory is plugged in, this is what you’ll see for the SPD information. One feature of this memory is its ability to boot up at its rated speeds and timings from the get go. Have you ever plugged in a set of DDR3 1866 MHz memory only to find the motherboard defaults it at 1333 MHz? That won’t be the case with these modules. They’ll boot right up at their rated speed and timings, thanks to Kingston’s PNP feature. To avoid any potential conflicts with the PNP feature, make sure you clear CMOS before installing the memory. As a side note, even though the command rate isn’t shown in the image below, it defaults at 1T.

Once at the desktop, Mem TweakIt gives us a confirmation of what we see above and a few more details.

Today’s review sample is part# HX318C10FWK2/8, which as we mentioned before is a DDR3-1866 MHz 2X4 GB kit. There’s nothing fancy about the packaging, but it does give the potential buyer a good look at the product inside. The cardboard ribbon gives you some basic information on the kit, such as capacity, speed, and the CL rating.

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With the modules removed from the packaging, we can get a closer look. They are certainly attractive and will go great with a white themed build. With the rainbow of colors these kits are available in, you shouldn’t have a problem selecting a color that matches your system’s color scheme.

Testing for Stability at Rated Speed

The first thing we need to do is check for stability at the kit’s rated speed/timings. For that task, we call upon our UltraX R.S.T. Pro USB RAM tester, which was kindly provided by UltraX. The R.S.T. Pro is by far the most demanding way to test memory there is, so much so that many memory manufacturers use it to keep an eye on quality control. Depending on the kit being tested, it can take many hours to complete the five pass test we like to perform. In the case of this kit, it took just over four hours to complete. After beating on the HyperX Fury for over four hours, the R.S.T. Pro came up clean with no errors recorded.

It’s not quite as intense as the R.S.T. Pro; but for in-OS testing, we chose HyperPi using all eight CPU threads. If you don’t have a R.S.T. Pro memory tester, this is the next best thing. For the vast majority of people, it’s the only utility you need for checking memory stability. No problems encountered here as the HyperX Fury kit flew right through the benchmark.

Benchmarks

First, a list of components in the test bed.

I have several different memory kits to use as comparisons. We have everything ranging from an 1866 MHz kit, all the way up to a 2666 MHz kit to look at. Obviously, direct comparisons are not the intent here, but rather we want to give you an idea of how (or if) the speed variations relate to performance increases. The closest direct comparison we have is the G.Skill 1866 MHz kit, but it has lower timings and will undoubtedly score better on most tests. Of course, the cost plays a part in this as well, but we’ll explore that later.

The graphs below are based off of percentages with the Kingston HyperX Fury kit being the basis, and therefore, always being 100%. The raw data used to make each graph is in the table below each chart.

The first set of tests are from AIDA64 Engineer Edition and include the memory read/write/copy/latency benchmarks. The higher percentage is better, except for the latency test where lower is better. No big surprises here with the Kingston Fury kit holding very tight to the G.Skill 1866 MHz kit and its tighter timings. Neither 1866 MHz kit comes close to the faster kits, but that’s completely expected.

SuperPI and wPrime benchmarks showed the same pecking order as above, with the exception being wPrime 1024M. The Kingston HyperX Fury actually beat every kit in the field in the wPrime 1024M test, but all the kits were within a fraction of a second of each other. wPrime seems to respond better to kits with tighter timings, regardless of their speed. The Kingston HyperX Fury kit also managed to top the G.Skill 1866 MHz kit in the SuperPi 1M run.

Moving on to some real world testing, we land at the x264 and PoV Ray benchmarks. These video compression results show very little difference between all the kits in the sample group, but the x264 pass 1 results do separate the comparison samples a bit more than the other tests. As you can see, the Kingston HyperX Fury hangs tough throughout these tests.

The Cinebench rendering and 7zip compression benchmarks tell the same story with little difference between all the kits. Less than a 2% difference was noted throughout these tests, and the Kingston HyperX Fury kit actually beat out a couple of the competing kits in the 7zip test run.

When you consider some of the kits in the comparison samples will cost twice what the Kingston HyperX Fury kit costs, it’s really hard to complain about the results above. All in all, a very nice showing for the Kingston HyperX Fury here.

Overclocking

By doing nothing more than raising the voltage to 1.65 V, the Kingston HyperX Fury kit ran happily at 2200 MHz, it doesn’t get much easier than that! It easily passed a run of HyperPi 32M at this setting… perhaps we have a DDR3-2200 MHz kit in disguise? Could be.

I managed to get up to 2400 MHz HyperPi stable by relaxing the timings a little bit. Voltage was still at 1.65 V, and the timings were set to 11-12-12-35-1T. That’s a 534 MHz overclock… you won’t find me complaining about that.

Returning the kit back to its stock 1866 MHz speed and leaving the voltage at 1.65 V, I wanted to see how much the timings could be tightened up. I managed a pretty good result here and was able to get to 9-9-9-24-1T. The kit was having no part of CL8, but dropping from 10-11-10-30 to 9-9-9-24 isn’t anything to gripe about. The voltage sweet spot for this particular Kingston HyperX Fury kit proved to be 1.65 V, which allowed a substantial speed increase and the ability to tighten up the timings a fair amount. Color me impressed with the overclocking ability this kit demonstrated.

Conclusion

The Kingston HyperX Fury products should be available for purchase on April 7th according to the information provided by Kingston. The MSRP on this particular kit is $89.99, which lands it right in the middle of similar 1.5 V 1866 MHz kits. So, I think it’s perfectly positioned price wise. However, we usually find the street price often comes in a tad lower than MSRP. We’ll have to wait and see what shakes out on that front.

Kingston’s PNP feature is something I haven’t run across before and takes the guess work out of initial setup. For those less tech savvy folks out there, knowing the memory will be set to the correct speed and timings the first time you boot them up is an attractive option. If stock speeds aren’t good enough for you, this kit is ready and willing to overclock with very little effort. Getting the kit stable at 2200 MHz only took raising the voltage to 1.65 V, no other modifications were necessary. Past that, you will have to experiment with timings, but getting the kit stable at 2400 MHz is definitely doable. The overclocking prowess alone will separate the Kingston HyperX Fury from many other similar kits on the market.

The Kingston HyperX Fury kits will be available in frequencies of 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz, and 1866 MHz. You also have a choice between white, black, red, and blue heatspreaders. For added aesthetic value, all kits feature a black PCB. With the variety of available speeds and colors, you shouldn’t have a problem gearing a set of HyperX Fury memory to your particular needs.

Kingston definitely checked all the boxes with their HyperX Fury memory. Whether you’re a novice PC enthusiast or a more demanding user, you’ll appreciate the good looks and great overclocking these kits provide. I have no problem recommending the Kingston HyperX Fury 1866 MHz memory kit to anyone looking for a high performance memory option.

Click the stamp for an explanation of what this means.

–Dino DeCesari (Lvcoyote)