ABT Visits Kingston’s New HyperX facility

This past Friday, July 17, 2014, Kingston Technology invited the press to celebrate the dedication of their new HyperX facility in Fountain Valley, California, as part of a “friends and family” day.  We had a great time learning about Kingston’s plans for HyperX as a gaming brand; we got to see a million dollar Bugatti, watched a memory overclocking demo, ate good food, and even won a 16GB HyperX White FURY RAM kit in a raffle.

The last time that ABT visited Kingston headquarters was just over 3 years ago, in early 2011.  We toured their factory where DRAM is made and we learned about Kingston’s future SSD pricing prediction that turned out to be accurate.  Kingston Technology Company is a privately owned, American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing, manufacturing, and selling computer-memory products.

Kingston generates revenues of approximately $6 billion US dollars a year. They are considered a very solid and conservative company but they also have branched into PC gaming with their HyperX brand, and they currently sponsor about 20 esport teams.  The dedication of Kingston’s newly repurposed HyperX facility demonstrates their strong commitment to gaming.

Kingston employs over 4,000 people worldwide in four manufacturing facilities located in the U.S.A., Taiwan and two in China, with about 800 employees at the Fountain Valley headquarters.  So there was a very large turn out for the Friends and Family event.  There are several buildings at Kingston’s Fountain Valley location, and the new HyperX facility in Building A was recently converted from mostly storage to a very comfortable new gaming headquarters.

 HyperX History

In 2002 Kingston launched a new HyperX line of high-performance memory modules.  A decade later, after celebrating ten years of HyperX gaming memory, Kingston released HyperX-branded SSD drives in 2012.  This year, Kingston’s HyperX released the FURY memory line for entry-level overclockers and for gamers.  The HyperX FURY replaces Kingston’s Blu memory line.

The HyperX 3K SSD is currently Kingston’s flagship SSD as the blue 5K SSD has been retired.  Their plans are to move this SSD to the midrange eventually, after the new PCIe-based SSDs are released.

Overclocking

This month, Kingston set a new world record at 4620MHz for overclocked memory.  They used the as-yet-unreleased 4GB HyperX Predator 2933MHz DDR3 module. They broke their own world record that they set at Computex this year, also using HyperX memory.

As you can see, the overclocking memory (top) is on a PCB designed specifically for overclocking, and it is compared to Kingston’s flagship HyperX (blue) Predator 2800MHz memory you can buy for your own PC.

Of course, Kingston set up their own overclocking display at the HyperX dedication event and they were using the same RAM to demonstrate memory overclocking.

The last time that we checked, the presenter had achieved a very stable overclock that was well in excess of 4,000MHz.  Fast indeed!  While the overclocking, tour, and gaming was going on, there was good food available outside.  No food or drink is allowed inside!

HyperX FURY

In 2014, Kingston HyperX released the FURY memory line for entry-level overclocking and gaming enthusiasts. ABT recently reviewed the White 2x4GB HyperX FURY auto-overclocking memory and gave it high marks.  Also, as part of the FURY lineup, HyperX recently launched the “maximum comfort, superior sound” Cloud gaming headset.

There are going to be some changes to Kingston’s HyperX memory line this year.  Genesis, their first HyperX memory, is being replaced with Savage, the new entry-level overclocking memory.  Beast is the next step up in the memory lineup, and Predator is Kingston’s fastest memory designed for the highest stable overclocks for those who wish to push the limits of their PC hardware.

Headsets

Here is Kingston’s display highlighting another custom PC, the HyperX memory cooling fan, HyperX memory, and the new White HyperX Cloud gaming headset.

The HyperX Cloud

The HyperX Cloud, a gaming headset for the under $100 price range, was released in white at Computex this year.  This editor got to try them out in the testing area.

The test song was from an acoustic recording of the Eagles which made for a perfect short listening test.  The highs were clear and transparent and there was excellent imaging.  The bass was strong but not exaggerated.

Best of all, the headset was comfortable! The ear pads conformed to the ear shape easily and they blocked out all ambient noise.  The HyperX Cloud comes with two sets of ear pads; one is designed to allow the gamer to hear what is going on in the room better.

Cloud’s construction looked to be excellent, and the microphone is detachable.  Usually, the mic is the weak link in any headset.  We look forward to an extended series of sessions with the HyperX Cloud for a future ABT evaluation.

HyperX and Gaming

The purpose of HyperX is to be the focus of Kingston’s gaming lineup.  The new HyperX facility has several conference rooms, with one large one set up for gamers and for LAN.HyperX sponsors about 20 teams in esports and the facility is dedicated to everything for gamers.  We are looking forward to new ideas and new products from Kingston’s HyperX division.  Kingston is all about their people and the company is also very family-oriented.

The good people at Kingston are the heart and soul of Kingston and the average employee has worked there for 12 years!  It is clear that the owners of Kingston have set up their company to be very people-oriented and they clearly do like their jobs, many are passionate about them, particularly those who work in public relations and with the media.  We want to thank them for inviting ABT to be a part of the HyperX event!

The food was excellent!  We also won a 16GB HyperX White FURY memory kit in the raffle, and got to see a million-dollar Bugatti up close.  One of the owners is a exotic car collector while the other is an avid golfer, we learned.

A couple of more gratuitous images of the car are in order.

This is Kingston’s newly repurposed HyperX building as viewed from the street.

ABT’s next Kingston evaluation will be the 240GB mSATA drive that we introduced as a portable flash drive in May.  In the meantime, we have an OWC Mercury Pro external Blu-ray burner and optical storage evaluation coming up this week, and a Galaxy GTX 780 V2 version to evaluate next week.  And perhaps a surprise or two also on the way.

Stay tuned to ABT for the latest relevant tech news, and especially check out ABT forum where the best tech discussions anywhere are taking place.

Happy gaming!