Kingston Fury Beast 3600Mhz DDR4 Review [KF436C18BBK2/32] – Rebadged HyperX but fantastic value for money

Following on from my review of the excellent Kingston Fury Renegade 3600Mhz RGB DDR4, I have also been checking out the Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR4 RAM kit

Kingston sold off the HyperX brand earlier this year, but the sale only included the peripherals. Gaming memory and storage will stay part of the Kingston business, and they recently announced their full range of DDR4 RAM.

This Kingston Fury Beast kit is essentially the same as the HyperX Fury I have previously reviewed, and the benchmarks of both this and HyperX were used in my Fury Renegade, I have also lazily reused much of the content from the previous review. However, I this memory represents good value for money so it is worth a post.

Specification

SKU	KF436C18BBK2/32
EAN/UPC Code	740617319743
Brand	Kingston
Memory Capacity	32GB Kit (16GB x2)
Module Quantity	2 Modules
Speed	3600MHz (PC4-28800)
Error Check	Non-ECC
Model/Series/Type	Fury Beast
Module Type	DIMM
CAS Latency	CL18
Form Factor	DDR4
Rank	1R (Single Rank)
Warranty	Lifetime
Pins	288 Pin
Colour	Black
Country of Origin	China, Taiwan
Memory Voltage	1.35v
Memory Depth	2G
Product Condition	New
Product Type/Family	RAM
Packaging Type	Retail
Data Width	X64
Chip Organization	x8
Heat Spreader	Yes
Intel XMP-Ready Profiles	Yes

Test Set-Up

I don’t have a dedicated test rig, but my main work PC consists of:

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
• MSI MEG X570 Unifi
• Zotac RTX 3080
• Kingston KC2500 1TB NVMe

For RAM, I am comparing against:

• HyperX Fury 32GB 3600MHz DDR4 – HX436C17FB3K2/32
• Kingston Fury Renegade 3600Mhz RGB DDR4 CL16

Technically, the HyperX has a better spec with CAS17 while the Kingston is CAS18, but even with the XMP profile set, the various benchmarking apps I used seem to think it is CAS18.

AMD CCD Memory Write Performance with Zen 2 and higher

With recent AMD CPUs that use a chipset design, you get a lower write speed for memory on CPUs that use a single CCD/chipset. This is a decision AMD made with the CPU and has nothing to do with the memory itself.

With the new chiplet design, each CCD is connected to the I/O chip (cIOD) via a high-speed data fabric capable of reading 32 bytes and writing 16 bytes on each clock cycle. For CPUs using a single CCD (such as mine), you get 16 bytes of write performance vs the 32 bytes that the cIOD uses.

AMD states this was a calculated design choice because most client workloads don’t do much writing. By halving the data link write speed between CCD and cIOD they save area, improves power, and a few other ancillary benefits.

12 and 16-core CPUs that use a two chipset design will not have these issues.

Installation / Set Up / XMP profiles

Nowadays, RAM is extremely simple to set up. Once you have installed it, on the first boot, you will likely be told to go into BIOS, from here. You can set the XMP profile,

This was auto-selected, so nothing else to do, I just exited, and the RAM was running at the correct timings and frequency.

Performance

There is not a huge performance difference between the three options I tested. The Kingston Beast does fractionally outperform the HyperX but not enough to claim it is significantly better, nor is there any reason it would be better.

AIDA64

	Renegade RGB	Kingston Beast	HyperX Fury
Read	50792	48948	44516
Write	28786	28131	28783
Copy	49028	44034	44542
Latency	72.9	69.4	88.5

Geekbench 4

• Kingston Beast: 6476/39156
• HyperX Fury: 6427/39019
• Renegade RGB: 6591/40621

Passmark Memory Test

• Kingston Beast: 3294
• HyperX Fury: 3171
• Renegade RGB: 3355

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Endwalker

Kingston Beast

Loading Times by Scene

• Scene #1: 1.185 sec
• Scene #2: 2.982 sec
• Scene #3: 3.178 sec
• Scene #4: 1.856 sec
• Scene #5: 1.035 sec
• Total Loading Time:10.236 sec

HyperX Fury

Loading Times by Scene

• Scene #1: 1.897 sec
• Scene #2: 2.462 sec
• Scene #3: 3.377 sec
• Scene #4: 1.655 sec
• Scene #5: 1.509 sec
• Total Loading Time: 10.481 sec

Renegade RGB

Loading Times by Scene

• Scene #1: 1.712 sec
• Scene #2: 2.32 sec
• Scene #3: 3.526 sec
• Scene #4: 1.443 sec
• Scene #5: 0.69 sec
• Total Loading Time: 9.691 sec

Price and Alternative Options

The exact model for this Kingston FURY Beast 32GB kit is KF436C18BBK2/32. It has a CAS latency of 18. I have not been given the official RRP, and when Box first listed this, it was at £197.50, which would have made it poor value for money. Either Box or the RRP has been overinflated and you can get it much cheaper now.

MemoryCow has it listed for £132.99, Box has it at £133, and Amazon has it for £167.94 sold via a Market Place seller.  Prices have been dropping consistently, about £10 has been knocked off in the past week.

Nowhere seems to have the HyperX kit in stock anymore (because all HyperX RAM is discontinued). Amazon state some are coming in, but it is listed at £229.99

The best buy I can find is the Crucial Ballistix BL2K16G36C16U4R 3600 MHz which is CAS16 for £147 available from Amazon.

Corsair Vengeance LPX Black CAS18 is £143, so almost the same price as the Kingston Fury Beast.

Overall

Similar to the Kingston Fury Renegade RGB, the Fury Beast kit is excellent RAM. It performs as you would expect RAM with this specification to perform, and it is one of the cheapest options on the market.

Pricing is quite close to competitors, last week it was about £10 more, so it was about the same as the Crucial and Corsair. The current price makes it the cheapest option I can find currently, so a great buy.  

Last update on 2024-12-12 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API