Recently, there has been an ever increasing demand for high quality, high speed memory. Chipsets like the nForce2 and i875P are able to push memory much further than ever before on both the Intel and AMD sides of the fence. Kingston has long been a manufacturer of high quality memory modules, and just recently (late 2002) they have released their ultra high performance memory line dubbed HyperX.

Aimed squarely at Corsair?s XMS memory line, Kingston hopes to regain lost ground in the battle for the performance enthusiast?s hard earned money. It?s amazing how far we have come, just a few years ago it was nearly impossible to find any manufacturer that would endorse overclocking of their products. Now almost every manufacturer supports some form of overclocking in their products, which is exactly what Kingston?s HyperX PC4000 memory is designed for. These chips are designed to run at DDR500 (250MHz double-pumped), which is not officially supported by any CPU at this time. The idea behind this is that when overclocking, the memory won?t be your limiting factor, all the more reason to pick up memory rated higher than the minimum for your setup.

The Chips

We received the 512MB dual-channel version (1GB kit is also available) of Kingston?s highest rated PC4000, DDR500 memory, which is designed for use in dual-channel capable motherboards such as the Intel 875P or nForce2. The memory itself is rated for 500MHz operation with 3-4-4-8-1 (CAS Latency 3) timing. The memory timings are rather high, but you?ll need to remember that these modules are basically DDR400 memory that has been tested and validated by Kingston to run at DDR500 using v2.6. Unfortunately, memory timings needed to be increased to attain this speed.


These chips, just like all of Kingston?s HyperX memory, are sandwiched between two blue aluminum heat spreaders for thermal dissipation. Heat spreaders are generally more aesthetically pleasing than anything, and don?t do a whole lot of cooling on their own. A difference of one degree Celsius is about all that can be expected, but nowadays just about all high end memory come standard with them.