HyperX Releases Dual-Channel DDR4 Kits For Z170 Motherboards

[Guest]

Intel launched information on its 6th generation "Skylake" Core processors, along with the Z170 chipset today. Kingston has released dual-channel HyperX DDR4 kits to pair with the new platform.

HyperX Releases Dual-Channel DDR4 Kits For Z170 Motherboards : Read more

 

[tom10167]

"HyperX Fury DDR4 kits are optimized to work with Intel's new platform..."
What'd they do?

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16399994,0,1631703]"HyperX Fury DDR4 kits are optimized to work with Intel's new platform..."
What'd they do?[/quotemsg]
They picked up the required marketing fluff along with some actual testing on 100-series motherboards and Skylake engineering samples.

 

[MasterDell]

Really nice to see this all new and improved heatsink. (sarcasm)

 

[griffon9]

wait what? Isn't this Kingston Hyper X ddr4 RAM been around for at least half a year now? I bought it like 1 month ago. How can they say this is new release?

 

[ubercake]

I like seeing the price come down on the DDR4...

 

[RazberyBandit]

ubercake: I'm more impressed with how pricing continues to drop on DDR3, though. 16GB kits that were $150+ last Christmas season are now well under $100.

I've never been impressed by Fury DIMMs. It's easy to find a rival from G-Skill, Mushkin, or Crucial with tighter timings for the same price, or less.

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16401623,0,206440]ubercake: I'm more impressed with how pricing continues to drop on DDR3, though. 16GB kits that were $150+ last Christmas season are now well under $100.[/quotemsg]
This is actually scary since periods of ridiculously low DRAM prices like these usually end with one or more DRAM manufacturers filing for bankruptcy: a 16GB kit is 32 chips and at $80 per kit, that's likely less than $2.25 per 4Gbits chip after you remove the PCB, head spreader, assembly, packaging, distribution and other costs. I seriously doubt DRAM manufacturers are turning a profit on that.

 

[Phuntasm]

All of these non-16GB module kits are killing me. I want to be able to do 4x16GB in the long run. Start with 2x16GB, and then upgrade to 4x16GB. If I was using a -E platform, sure, I could do 8GB modules for 8x8=64GB, but Skylake-E is nowhere in sight. As such, if I want to use the latest arch I need 16GB modules.

Why do 4GB-based kits even matter? We were supposed to get double the RAM with the move to DDR4, yet 8GB is the most we see, and there are plenty of phenomenally fast and relatively cheap choices in 8GB DDR3. So I expect 16GB to be the "it" for DDR4. Advertising 4GB modules seems asinine

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16401825,0,1735840]Advertising 4GB modules seems asinine[/quotemsg]
Why? Aside from super-users, compute-intensive professionals and gamers who leave tons of background stuff open, very few people actually require more than 8GB RAM in their systems and companies do not want to waste $50-80 extra per machine on memory their office PCs will never need. 2x4GB seems like exactly the right starting point for modern PCs to me.

 

[hannibal]

So true! I make some picture editing and 16gb is nice, but any normal human can do everything they need with 4Gb of memory. So having 8Gb is something extra.
For video editing I would like to get 32 or 64Gb, but that is quite different thing.

 

[MasterHiFi]

For a while, it looked like RAM was going to continue to drop in price, and I thought "i7-5930K, here I come!" What happened? And will those amazing prices ever return?

 

[ubercake]

[quotemsg=16401704,0,125865][quotemsg=16401623,0,206440]ubercake: I'm more impressed with how pricing continues to drop on DDR3, though. 16GB kits that were $150+ last Christmas season are now well under $100.[/quotemsg]
This is actually scary since periods of ridiculously low DRAM prices like these usually end with one or more DRAM manufacturers filing for bankruptcy: a 16GB kit is 32 chips and at $80 per kit, that's likely less than $2.25 per 4Gbits chip after you remove the PCB, head spreader, assembly, packaging, distribution and other costs. I seriously doubt DRAM manufacturers are turning a profit on that.[/quotemsg]

Good point.

This also might be why most of the DRAM producers are diversifying their product offerings as many have penetrated the SSD market?

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16403616,0,299576]This also might be why most of the DRAM producers are diversifying their product offerings as many have penetrated the SSD market?[/quotemsg]
Most diversified away from regular DRAM to reduce liabilities on that side of the market. The interest in SSD/NAND is mostly a lucky coincidence: NAND and DRAM manufacturing are very similar, which provides them an alternative to either running DRAM production at a loss or the costs of doing a shutdown-and-restart.

 

[Phuntasm]

[quotemsg=16401946,0,125865][quotemsg=16401825,0,1735840]Advertising 4GB modules seems asinine[/quotemsg]
Why? Aside from super-users, compute-intensive professionals and gamers who leave tons of background stuff open, very few people actually require more than 8GB RAM in their systems and companies do not want to waste $50-80 extra per machine on memory their office PCs will never need. 2x4GB seems like exactly the right starting point for modern PCs to me.[/quotemsg]

Ok, maybe not asinine. You're right, 4x4=16GB and most people will fit just fine in that. It's slightly disappointing to me though. It's commodity RAM at this point. You can pick up handfuls of 4GB DDR3, and now even DDR4 modules, and they're all going to be at least "pretty good." It's like advertising HDDs or ODDs - who cares, they'll all do the job now.

I was expecting RAM manufacturers to have some big battle over who can put out the biggest fastest DDR4 modules, but alas. DDR4's promise was 2x the capacity, but I am not seeing a push for it.

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16404679,0,1735840]DDR4's promise was 2x the capacity, but I am not seeing a push for it.[/quotemsg]
DDR4's promises also include lower power and higher clock frequencies. Nothing said they would deliver all three at the same time - they practically never do at launch.

When DDR3 originally came out, the biggest DIMMs were only 4GB because memory manufacturers were still working on 4Gb die yields. Once 4Gb dies matured, we got affordable and fast 8GB modules. If you want affordable and fast 16GB DDR4 modules, you will have to wait for DRAM manufacturers to achieve better yields on 8Gb DDR4 DRAM dies.

If you look at DDR4 chip specs from manufacturers like Micron, their only 1600MHz or 3200MT/s DDR4 chips are in 4Gb size - smaller chips have less difficulty achieving higher data rates and lower latencies, which is why performance-oriented kits focus on 4GB and 8GB sizes using 4Gb dies.

 

[rwinches]

The Z170 only supports Two Channel RAM (Not Four) so you want to use only two slots for the total RAM you require. Using Four slots will mean slower speeds as with DDR3.
So installing four 4 GB sticks will slower than two 8 GB sticks.
Will Two sticks of Two Channel DDR4 be faster than DDR3?
I guess we'll find out for sure soon.

 

[InvalidError]

[quotemsg=16405726,0,68963]The Z170 only supports Two Channel RAM[/quotemsg]
The chipset supports no memory whatsoever since the memory controller is built into the CPU and supporting four DIMMs across two channels, albeit at potentially lower stable data rates, is still is dual channel but that is a limitation of all parallel multi-drop busses, nothing specific to any CPU or memory type.

 

[rwinches]

Wow you're a genius.
I was just using the statement in the article
'Z170 makes use of DDR4 memory, but not in the quad-channel configurations that x99 uses.'

A main feature of DDR4 promotion was four channel capability vs two channel of DDR3.

Although your point is moot if the CPUs that install in Z170 1151 boards don't support 4 channel.


Your correction should be directed at the writer.

 

[MasterDell]

[quotemsg=16405726,0,68963]The Z170 only supports Two Channel RAM (Not Four) so you want to use only two slots for the total RAM you require. Using Four slots will mean slower speeds as with DDR3.
So installing four 4 GB sticks will slower than two 8 GB sticks.
Will Two sticks of Two Channel DDR4 be faster than DDR3?
I guess we'll find out for sure soon. [/quotemsg]
A 4x4GB kit will be slower than a 2x8GB kit..?

 

[rwinches]

I just bought three new dual channel MBs Gigabyte, Asus and ASRock all recommend using only two sockets for highest performance.

Now will that difference be noticeable outside synthetics or benchmarks? It depends on what programs you run.

 

[MasterDell]

Oh okay. Makes sense