Kingston HyperX H2O 4GB 2133MHz DDR3 CL9 Memory Kit Review

By Bill Hentschell

Kingston HyperX H2O 4GB 2133Mhz: KHX2133C9AD3W1K2/4GX

There are several brand name enthusiast PC memory manufacturing companies in the market today that all use similar ICs with comparable performance levels, warranties, and customer support. So how do you stand out from the crowd in this environment? You innovate in the areas of heat management and the visual impact of your memory kit. It is a well known fact that the enemy of maximum performance in the PC arena is heat, and it is also well known that liquid cooling moves heat away from components much better than air. For those of you that want to go deep on water cooling, Kingston has the answer by integrating a water tube in the heat spreader of their top of the line HyperX memory and rebranding it HyperX H2O.
Kingston Hyper X H2O
When it comes to water cooling there are generally two camps, either only focus on the CPU and GPU, or put everything possible under water. You can read for days on your water cooling forum of choice about people debating the advantages of water cooling the motherboard VRMs and SouthBridge along with the system DRAM. The first group points to all kinds of benchmarks showing no real performance gains by cooling the motherboard and RAM stating it is all about looks. The second group states that by putting everything under water they remove all heat from the case and therefore help the CPU and GPU run even cooler providing further over clocking headroom. If you are of the mind that you want to put everything under water this Hyper X H2O kit is for you.

Kingston was nice enough to send us their top of the line HyperX H20 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-17000 2133MHz kit (model: KHX2133C9AD3W1K2/4GX) for this review. Running at 2133Mhz is very fast so I expect great results from this kit especially compared to the more common 1600Mhz kits you find today.

Kingston Hyper X H2O 2133Mhz

The three flavors of the Kingston HyperX H2O memory kits available:

  • 4GB (2 x 2GB) 2000MHz DDR3 CL9 Dual Channel Kit – KHX2000C9AD3W1K2/4GX
  • 6GB (3 x 2GB) 2000MHz DDR3 CL9 Triple Channel Kit – KHX2000C9AD3W1K3/6GX
  • 4GB (2 x 2GB) 2133MHz DDR3 CL9 Dual Channel Kit – KHX2133C9AD3W1K2/4GX

Street Price:

In trying to track down a current street price I started with Kingston’s own store that had a special price of $145.00 after you enter a promo code. This is a $7.00 discount from the kits MSRP of $152.00. I found a better price on Tiger Direct for $139.99 and Compuvest at $134.32. Several of the links I followed gave me the standard HyperX kit not the H2O, so be sure to match the part number properly if you use a price comparison site as it might not be comparing the same two products.

I think the ~$135 price reflects that while this is a screaming DDR3 PC3-17000 memory kit it has been on the market for awhile and the audience of those that water cool memory is rather small. As a bonus this put the price in the same range as the limited edition grey HyperX air cooled kit running at the same speed. From that perspective this is could be considered a good deal as you get the integrated water cooling set up basically for free.

Kingston HyperX H2O 4GB Features:

  • Storage Capacity: 4 GB : 2 x 2 GB
  • Service & Support: Limited lifetime warranty ( Russia – 10 years )
  • Type: DRAM
  • Technology: DDR3 SDRAM
  • Form Factor: DIMM 240-pin
  • Module Height (inch): 1.88
  • Memory Speed: 2133 MHz ( PC3-17000 )
  • Latency Timings: CL9 ( 9-11-9-27)
  • Data Integrity Check: Non-ECC
  • RAM Features: Eight banks, On-Die Termination (ODT), Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP), dual channel, Water-cooled system , unbuffered
  • Module Configuration: 256 x 64
  • Chips Organization: 128 x 8
  • Supply Voltage: 1.65 V
  • Lead Plating: Gold

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