DDR2 is continuing to sell for less than the actual cost of production, which is great news for consumers but not so good for DDR3 memory. Although DDR3 memory has been available for almost a year now, at best it still costs at least twice as much as DDR2 memory of the same capacity. However as the frequencies improve so too does the performance of DDR3 memory, at 1600MHz it is now a viable alternative to DDR2 memory, at least in terms of performance.

The JEDEC specification for DDR3-1066MHz memory is CAS 7-7-7-20 2T at 1.5v, which is very poor when compared to DDR2 memory operating at the same frequency. However, Kingston guarantees that their HyperX PC3-13000 memory can operate at CAS 7-7-7-20 1T with 1.9v of power at 1625MHz. These are quite impressive timings for DDR3-1625 memory and should allow the modules to be quite flexible when it comes time to overclock them.

The KHX13000D3LLK2/2G performance based memory comes from the “HyperX” family and they feature the standard Kingston blue heat spreaders. Although heat spreaders are not entirely necessary for DDR3 memory, when working with 1.9 volts at 1625MHz, they will ensure that the memory remains at a safe operating temperature. It should be noted that these are single sided modules so the heatspreaders are really only cooling eight chips on one side.

Finishing off the installation are two strong retaining clips designed to ensure that the heat spreaders never move or damage the memory when users press down on them to install the modules. Furthermore this method also improves contact, allowing the heat spreaders to remove heat from all the memory chips. The PCB itself is still green, which is a shame as blue would have looked that little bit better, though overall the modules do look impressive. Priced at around $320 US the HyperX KHX13000D3LLK2/2G is certainly not the cheapest PC3-12800/13000 2GB dual-channel memory kit going around.

Given that 2GB DDR3-1600 memory kits start around $180 US, with the majority of low-latency kits costing upward of $240 US, at $320 US you are paying quite a price premium for this Kingston memory. The cheapest 1600MHz low-latency kit we could find came from Patriot (CAS 7-7-7-18 2T) which was priced around $210 US, so the Kingston pricing does seem a little on the high side. The big question is of course how well do they perform? Well without wasting any more time, let’s move on to the next section of this review where we put these modules to the test using our Intel X48 system!