We see new memory releases time and time again, and when they come with green PCBs, someone will mention that the color green sucks. Since we did away with green PCBs on most VGAs and motherboards long ago, I really have to agree. A green PCB is bad. Very bad. So, Kingston listened to those comments and changed the color. Enthusiasts the world over can rejoice! Kingston told me, asked if I wanted a sample, and sent me one. I expected little and received better than expected.

When it comes time for me to run benchmarks for a review, I really don't pay much attention to the results, and since I run benchmarks often, they are usually just a blur of numbers I wait for so I can quickly press "PRT SC" on my keyboard to save the screenshot of the result to a file. I followed that same routine with the Kingston HyperX Beast Black kit I have here. Not paying much attention to the numbers themselves, I thought about the relatively low overclock these stick achieved and how those might influence overall performance. When it came time for me to create my graphs, I placed the Kingston HyperX Beast Black DIMM results into their proper places in my result files. CPU performance was as expected, but I couldn't believe what I saw when it came time to look at the 3D numbers. I'm not exactly sure what happened here, but I did go back, rebuild the test system I had torn down to replace with Haswell, and ran all the tests again. Somehow, these sticks are really good in 3D. It doesn't seem right, but that is what the results show. With a near 200-point boost noticed in 3DMark's FireStrike test, it's definitely not just a normal variance between tests. The last Kingston kit I tested, the Predator sticks, seemed to have some strange 3D abilities as well, so I can't help but think that there's perhaps a weird timing mix here that pays off in spades for Kingston, or I simply screwed up somehow (yes, I verified VGA clocks).

These Kingston HyperX Beast Black sticks come at a fairly decent price for a 16 GB kit with two sticks, have a bit of headroom, and work on pretty much any system, and their blacked-out esthetics are sure to blend in well with nearly any build. These Beasts sure have been a bit wild for me, and they should be for you as well.