WATERCOOLING, THE CHOICE of, well at least some overclockers, but it seems to be mostly used as a marketing tool these days without any real market penetration. Kingston has just announced three sets of HyperX H2O memory modules (which we spied back at CES), all of which feature support for water cooling. We just can’t quite figure out who is going to buy these new modules.
Don’t take us the wrong way, we’re not saying that Kingston has launched poor product, not at all, it’s just that there isn’t a very big market for water cooled accessories like this. The extreme overclockers on competitive level have moved on to far more exotic cooling solutions like dry ice and LN2 and your average consumer most likely has no clue what kind of cooling he or she has in their PC. Those that bother to overclock their PC these days are mostly still using air coolers, as they’re affordable, something water cooling never became. This leaves is will a small group of enthusiast users and gamers, most of who build their own water cooling rigs out of various collections of high-end bits.
Maybe this is the market that Kingston is targeting with the new modules. The three kits consist of the KHX2000C9AD3W1K2/4GX, KHX2133C9AD3W1K2/4GX and the KHX2000C9AD3W1K3/6GX. All three kits are XMP optimized which means that they’re targeting Intel systems. The KHX2000C9AD3W1K2/4GX consists of a pair of 2GB modules with a clock speed of 2GHz and latencies of 9-11-9-27 and operates at 1.65V. We can’t say we’re overly impressed with the latencies of these modules, especially as Kingston’s competitors are offering modules with the same clock speed that carry lower latencies. At $157, you’re paying a lot of extra money for the ability to hook your memory up to your water cooling kit.
The KHX2133C9AD3W1K2/4GX offers the same latencies and operating Voltage but ups the speed to 2133MHz, but you also end up paying more, as this kit retails for no less than $205. Finally the KHX2000C9AD3W1K3/6GX kit consist of three 2GB modules that operates at 2GHz with latencies of 9-10-9-27, again at 1.65V and this kit will set you back $235. Steep prices indeed and we can’t really see the benefit of these modules, but Kingston isn’t the first company to offer these kinds of products, so there’s obviously a market somewhere for them.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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