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For many years now Kingston have been market leaders in the computer memory sector. But now with more and more overclockers and speed-freaks than ever before, there is a serious demand for super fast, high performance quality memory. Today, I'll be looking at Kingston’s Hyper-X PC4300 (DDR533) 1GB Dual channel kit, which is currently the fastest kit they offer.

The Kington Hyper-X kit comes neatly packaged in a sturdy plastic case, with a separate compartment for each of the 2 sticks, with a small installation manual folded under one of them, and all is secured with a plastic transparent cover, and sealed with a specification sticker which must be cut or torn to access the modules. The secure packaging is certainly reassuring, as some modules I've seen are simply taped up into anti static bags and thrown in a box.

The modules are built onto sturdy green PCB's, and covered with blue anodized aluminium heat spreaders with the Kingston brand printed onto them. This gives a smart appearance, and the heat spreaders will definitely be necessary to help dissipate some heat when the modules are running at high speeds.

This 1GB kit comprises 2x 512MB sticks which are rated at CL3 (3,4,4,8 timings) and a speed of PC4300 (DDR533). So the latency of CL3 isn’t as fast as some special low-latency sticks, but where this Hyper-X really stands out is the speed it should be capable of DDR533, which means the clock should easily run at 266MHz, and maybe more with the right setup.