Kingston HyperX KHX9600D2K2/2G

Warranty:

Kingston offers a superb lifetime warranty for the modules (10 years in France, Germany or Austria), so despite needing some 30 percent overvoltage (2.35V) meaning an increased susceptibility to electro-migration within the memory chips, you know you're absolutely covered in your investment.

Kingston's warranty is North American and China-centric in that it provides numbers for US, Canada, Taiwan and China residents to call. This means its website is the first port of call for UK (and other non-Chinese / North American residents) when it comes to technical issues or if you're in need of an RMA number. You then need to send your broken bits back to your point of sale, or organise sending it to an official distributor or reseller of Kingston products.

Conclusion

The performance at stock speeds may not match that of the slightly overclocked Corsair PC2-9136 Dominator when they are both running at 1200MHz, but it's still certainly very good. The Kingston does match or exceed the Corsair modules at low latency or when overclocked though, but neither of these are guaranteed at your end.

Considering we gave the Corsair PC2-9136 and PC2-10000 Dominator modules a nine and ten for performance respectively, it's with that in mind that we give the Kingston a similar score.

The lack of EPP is frustrating, where not only the timings and speed are set, but also the motherboards voltages as well. It takes away the guesswork for those who are unfamiliar with what should be changed. If Kingston included EPP it would make the installation so much easier for boards that support it. More enthusiast chipsets need to support EPP, even though it is an Nvidia standard, and it needs to be more apparent what motherboards incorporate it too.

On the plus side though, it took very little effort to tweak the memory for some excellent performance on our Inno3D nForce 680i SLI motherboard, and the DIMMs gave a stable overclock very close to the Corsair Dominator PC2-10000 stock speeds at PC2-9856 or 1232MHz.

With 2.35V going through them the modules got extremely hot. With this in mind, we feel the heat spreaders are verging on being insufficient for the task in hand. Kingston needs to either sort out some additional cooling fans like the ones that Corsair and OCZ offer, or use an actual heatsink rather than just heat-spreaders. Removing them after a testing session was like juggling hot potatoes.


We feel the package could be a bit more attractive, considering these are meant to be aimed at performance enthusiasts. The DIMM's themselves need something inventive as everyone else in the industry has their own edge. There isn't an incentive to pick them up as they don't look faster than the next DIMM.

If we were so unconcerned with looks we'd still be using "old school green" and "baby crap yellow" PCBs for most things. Regardless of whether some would like to admit it, we do enjoy the bling and the funky lighting to some degree, but Kingston just doesn't pander to it.

The Corsair PC2-10000 modules are still a massive £480 but still aren't in stock, and even Corsair's PC2-8888 CAS4 modules will set you back an eye watering £408. These should do PC2-9600+ at a similar latency as the Kingston. In comparison the OCZ Reaper (and even FlexXLC) PC2-9200 modules are a brick cheaper at only £140 for the same two gigabytes.

However, if you thought all that was a good price, the Kingston PC2-9600 2GB kit is just £125, or £133 with free delivery.

That's is an incredible bargain because not only are they faster than the OCZ, but it also clocks very close to the £480 Corsair PC2-10,000 Dominator modules. At £125-£130, you're looking at either PC2-8500 or PC2-6400 low latency modules from most other manufacturers. The Kingston modules will likely do a lower latency than either PC2-8500 or PC2-6400 at the same speeds.

Final Thoughts

For the price you simply cannot do better than the Kingston HyperX PC2-9600. So what if they run really hot? They do the job just fine with the right settings and they work perfectly well and even in excess of what they're rated at. You've also got a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

They don't have EPP or look pimped out and they should if you're buying performance memory. But then again, there becomes a point where you just forego all the extras and setting for the pure saving.

They maybe not as absolutely fast as the equivalent speed Corsair memory, but they certainly aren't slow, and for a few hundred notes saving I wouldn't complain. You're still buying a pair of sticks with a good brand, and it's a price we'd certainly pay.

• Performance
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• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Features
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• x
• x
• x
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• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
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• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

What do these scores mean?