I was really happy with the Kingston HyperX Genesis 10th Anniversary kit I covered a little while ago, so when I began testing this kit, I expected these HyperX Beast sticks to perform much the same. At first glance, the HyperX Beast kit appears to consist of the same sticks wrapped in a sexier nightgown, having a similar set of timings and a similar default speed. Those provocative clothes should have been the first indicator that things might not be as they appear, and the HyperX Beast kit definitely offered something far different once I got around to overclocking it.
While I remain impressed, I am a bit torn about these sticks—sure, they offer decent overclocking headroom, but is the cost worth it? After completing all of the testing and seeing the performance numbers, this kit is definitely worth a price premium, but only if overclocking.
As the base of a fully overclocked system, the Kingston HyperX Beast kits do really well by scaling well over what I had expected, offering, in the case of my kit's overclock potential, the ability to both scale up the base clock and to simply choose the next divider with my IvyBridge CPU for quick and easy performance boosts. However, since those boosts are very small indeed, this kit isn't going to be for everyone.
Fortunately, the Kingston HyperX Beast kit fits most rigs well, so look no further if you want some snazzy ram. It even sports a fancy black PCB to match kits shipping from Kingston today and rings in for less than some of the other 2400 MHz kits on the market today. IF you want to push your system's performance limits, these sticks will definitely help you get there.