Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB memory review

Our Verdict

87%

These memory modules offer sweet-spot performance out of the box, and with plenty of overclocking headroom.

There have been a few DDR4 frequency sweet spots over recent years, and Kingston has nailed it here by offering a fast DDR4 gamer memory kit for under $100. This Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB kit has an effective frequency of 3733MHz, which is an easy target for most motherboards if you want to run the memory in a 1:1 ratio with AMD’s Infinity Fabric clock.

At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest memory since 2003, and we’ve tested and overclocked hundreds of kits, going right back to the original DDR era. We run both synthetic and application benchmarks to assess performance, and also see how far we can overclock each kit. In addition, we look at any RGB lighting features and assess how good it looks, as well as how well the control software works. For more information, check out our How we test page.

Not all motherboards are happy to run at 3733MHz or faster, of course, but 3733MHz is considered to be the sweet spot in terms of achievability and performance. The Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB gets there with 19-23-23-42 timings and SK Hynix D-die memory chips under the hood. This is plumbed into the XMP profile, and you can also play with the additional 3600MHz profile with slightly tighter timings.

Meanwhile, the RGB lighting is bright and vibrant, but in bright daylight, we could see the slight tell-tale signs of gaps between the LEDs underneath the diffusing strips on top. We couldn’t fault the colors, though, which were bold and accurate. Kingston has decent RGB software too, in the form of Fury CTRL, but in addition, the lighting can also be controlled by motherboard lighting software from ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.

The heatsinks also measure 42mm from top to bottom, so they’re certainly low-profile enough to avoid fouling most CPU heatsinks, but for some reason, we couldn’t grab a temperature reading using various bits of software. Still, the heatsinks were warm, so were definitely working and we encountered no issues overclocking either.

Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB overclocking

Here, we pushed the frequency from 3733MHz to a decent 4000MHz without touching the voltage or timings. If you’re keen to push the envelope beyond and do some tinkering then it’s good to know there’s a decent amount of headroom.

With only the 3733MHz XMP profile loaded, the peak read speed of 48,559MB/s was the lowest result we’ve tested recently, but like any current DDR4 modules, spending extra time and dialing in the same frequency to the fabric clock saw this rise to 51,953MB/s, making up for the second loosest timings we’ve recently tested.

The overclock also improved the latency, which fell from a poor 76.7ns to 70.9ns, but again, it pays to match the memory’s frequency to your fabric clock, as even at stock speed, the latency fell even further to 67.8ns.

The lofty overclock also meant the Kingston was one of the few kits we’ve tested to benefit in our RealBench test, with every result gaining a small amount and resulting in the second-highest system score we’ve seen in a memory test.

Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB pros and cons

Pros

• Low profile
• Good lighting software
• Sweet spot frequency

Cons

• Cheaper overclocked kits can offer similar speeds
• Lighting is good but not the best
• Bland-looking heatsinks

Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB spec

The Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB specs list is:

Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB price

Price: Expect to pay $99 / £90.

Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB review conclusion

Opting for fast memory with an AMD Ryzen system means nothing without matching your Infinity Fabric clock to it, and even with relatively loose timings, the Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB saw sizeable benefits from its 3733MHz frequency once the fabric clock was set to the same speed.

This Kingston kit has plenty of overclocking headroom if you want to push these frequencies further, but critically, most Socket AM4 motherboards should be able to hit 3733MHz on the fabric clock these days, especially with the latest BIOS versions.

With snazzy RGB lighting, decent software, a reasonable price and the ability to easily delve into detailed tweaking, this kit is top of our list if you need low-profile RGB memory. However, if you have room for taller modules, Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro is noticeably cheaper, and was happy to overclock to 3733MHz and beyond.