Kingston HyperX Savage DDR4-3000 16GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit Review

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Our last venture with a set of Kingston HyperX memory was back in X99 testing, and we found that Fury kit to be very flexible, and well worth the investment, but today brings us to a different series of RAM. Kingston HyperX sent over the Savage dual-channel DDR4 kit made for Skylake to have us try it out. Even though we are comparing apples and oranges, we do have expectations that this kit should not be that much different. If anything, with fewer sticks involved, we should be able to do a bit better.

The kit of Savage DDR4 we look at today is the HX430C15SBK2/16. This is a dual-channel kit with two 8GB sticks. They offer dual XMP profiles, one at 2666 with lowered timings, but are sold as 3000 MHz with 15-16-16-39 2T timings, and requiring 1.35V to ensure either XMP profile works as expected. We also know that this is yet another SK Hynix based submission.

Initially, we did run into a couple of snags with this kit, but after some testing trying to weed out the cause of a few post errors, amazingly the Savage kit seemed to come to life and run as described. We should have known at that time that our ASUS motherboard is picky about memory and tends not to like Hynix based kits, but with the Mushkin's overclocking headroom we just saw, we tried to work past the issues and still obtain great things from this kit as well.

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The HyperX Savage arrives in a clear plastic shell that snaps together and locks the sticks into place. Unlike many others who have a cardboard insert, Kingston HyperX lets the kit do all the talking as they are the only thing you see when walking up to the package outside of the bright red stripe with all the information on it.

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The Savage sticks use black PCBs with black spreaders on top. The HyperX is raised natural aluminum, and the Savage DDR4 at the other end is painted on. The spreaders offer styling throughout. There are curves on the sides, angles all over, and an appearance much like the top of an automatic rifle. HyperX also includes an inset on what is covered during the lifetime warranty.

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The top edge of the Savage sticks sports the HyperX naming painted on at the left. The grooves cut in the top allow a view of the PCB, and a set of four of these on a Skylake motherboard would have a very nice look to it.

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Across fifteen tabs, there are four little fins in each section that are slightly angled away from each other. These red tops do offer quite an attractive look to their tops, and would look even better with four of them in our ASUS Maximus VIII Hero.

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After a bit of fiddling around with this kit, we got the XMP profile to work correctly with our motherboard. We found that this set of Savage RAM did indeed run at 3000MHz with 15-16-16-39 2T timings. However, this is it. No matter the voltage or the timings used, we could not get this kit to budge from the XMP profile without instability.

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Testing the kit with AIDA64, we ended up with results very comparable to the Ripjaws that also ran at this speed. All three tests, copy, read, and write is all where they should be for this speed and these timings.

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Once we saw the results in Mem TweakIt, we realized why this kit is so tough to clock. The secondary and tertiary timings are set tighter than in most other kits; this is how the Savage and the Ripjaws can cross the 71000 mark here.

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RealBench does not shed a favorable light on this kit, however. Checking these results we see the Savage kit falls below the Ripjaws and performs closer to kits in the 2800M MHz range.

We tried our hardest to get more out of this kit, and with the minor issues we had getting the kit to run, we were sure to make contact with Kingston about our findings. After an email to the techs over there, and three weeks with no reply, we figured they know there is an issue with these getting anything more than XMP out of the Savage on the Maximus VIII Hero, or they just figured XMP is fine and dandy, which it is. Nowhere on the box does it say these will clock, or does it say timings can be lowered, we just had expectations with this kit that we could not meet. With nothing to go off of from the company on this matter in quite some time now, we figured we would bring forth what we found.

In most instances, this 3000MHz 16GB kit of Savage will perform as expected, and in some instances where timings are a big factor in productivity, this kit can pull out a slight lead over most of the competition as it is shipped right out of the box. It is designed with just enough gun styling to attract tons of gamers, yet also keeps things a bit more simple and does not go full-out with gaudy styling, just black spreaders, a natural aluminum HyperX name, and high contrasting white paint used anywhere else naming needed to be placed. The Savage DDR4 will have no issues finding a home in any system as anything goes with black.

Shopping for this kit leaves us feeling the cost is a little steep for what it is that this kit can do. Looking at Newegg, we found the Savage DDR4 3000MHz 16GB kit listed at $164.99. As we looked at Amazon for potentially a better deal, we found that this kit is not yet listed, but they do offer single sticks of this exact model and are asking $85.99 per stick. Not exactly a better deal. On another motherboard, your mileage may vary compared to our results, but the bottom line is that everything we saw is exactly what was promised, and the reality is we cannot ask more than that of any product. That being said, with its limitations, we do find the price a bit higher than the market average. Considering there are other solutions that will do this for less than one hundred dollars, it leaves is in a bind as to how highly we could recommend this kit.

Chad's DDR4 Dual-Channel Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VIII Hero - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Cooler: Corsair H110i GTX - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Video Card: MSI GeForce N760 2GD5/OC ITX - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Storage: SanDisk Extreme II 120GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Case: Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Thermaltake TPSG 1050W - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit - Buy from Amazon
• Software: CPU-Z 1.74.0 x64, MemTweakIt, RealBench 2.41, AIDA64 Engineer 5.50.3600