Kingston HyperX T1 12GB DDR3 1600mhz Review (X58)

1. Introduction2. Kingston HyperX T1 12GB DDR3 1600mhz3. Testing Methodology and Setup4. KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark5. Adobe Photoshop CS5 Real World testing6. AIDA 647. SiSoft Sandra8. 3dStudio Max 20119. MaxxMem10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

The Kingston HyperX T1 12GB DDR3 kit is a stunning looking product, the black livery of the T1 heatspreaders are a perfect pairing with the Asus Rampage III Black Edition motherboard.

Kingston make a wide range of quality DDR3 memory with a general market focus on 1GB and 2GB density sticks. Many manufacturers will start focusing on higher density configurations as computer demands and application overheads continue to increase. Memory prices right now are as good as we can remember, although with the recent disaster in Japan there is a certainty that general market prices will rise in coming months.

The HyperX T1 kit we received for review has performed very well, although it is worth mentioning a few points. Firstly, the high density configuration means that tighter timings are inherently more difficult, so 9-9-9 is pretty much a current performance standard. While this doesn't sound particularly impressive on paper, in reality you would be hard pressed to tell the differences between this kit and one with 7-9-7 timings.

In regards to gaming, a 12GB configuration makes little to no difference when directly compared against a more typical 6GB configuration. I spent a lot of time testing many of the leading games and trying to find tangible benefits, but for now it really is not needed.

There are however, other (and rather significant) benefits.

When using a memory intensive program such as Adobe Photoshop, our testing has highlighted performance gains when opening very large files. In fact, anything which is going to force Photoshop into using the scratch disc will significantly impact performance. We experienced similar performance boosts when manipulating large images which had many layers – with a larger amount of physical memory, the system spent less time paging data back and forward from the hard disc and subsequently leaving the end user with a much more responsive and reactive interface. Obviously if you have configured Photoshop to page data to a fast Solid State Drive the data lag will not be so dramatic, but it is still noticeable.

If you are a professional, or ‘serious' amateur who needs to frequently work on large image or video files then the additional memory will positively impact overall system performance. Also if, like myself, you work with multiple screens and have many programs open simultaneously then a higher memory count will reap rewards.

At only £140 inc vat, we feel this is a fantastic upgrade and offers significant future proofing for a high powered system for both gaming and serious work. If someone had said a few years ago that you could buy 24GB of DDR3 1600mhz memory for £280, it would have seemed an almost ludicrous claim.

Pros:

• beautiful heatspreader design
• great performance
• £140 inc vat. bargain.

Cons:

• oversized heatspreaders can cause mounting issues with the largest cpu coolers (Noctua NH D14)
• timings aren't as tight as 3x2GB.

KitGuru says: Another quality memory kit from Kingston and for those who want futureproofing, or demand more memory for serious duties.

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