Performance-wise Sandy Bridge has been a phenomenal achievement for Intel. Many have moved across to this new platform in order to reap the performance gains that are to be had. So if you are pondering a move to Sandy Bridge its important to consider the memory kit you feed the system. Overclocking has changed quite dramatically. We can now only move in small increments in terms of memory overclock because of the fixed BCLK, so if you are wanting to overclock then its important to choose a decent kit a combination of good memory frequency, low latency and voltage is a wise consideration.

The Kingston HyperX Special Edition kit is designed specifically for the Intel P67 chipset (Sandy Bridge) and comes with XMP support. If you have read this review you will be aware that this memory performs superbly for a CL9 rated kit. The gaming benchmarks may have revealed a nominal improvement over the other kits and overclocking increase but within the synthetic tests there are some significant results to contemplate.

Physically, the HyperX Special Edition kit continues to provide you with an extremely low profile. The heat spreaders are going to be the shortest you will ever come across. A mere 1mm extension over the standard height of the DIMMs underlines just how compatible this kit will be with CPU coolers currently on the market. If you can't fit a CPU cooler on your motherboard with the HyperX Special Edition, you aren't going to be able to fit the cooler with any other ram per se.



The highlight though surely has to be the price. Retailing at just £40 Inc. VAT the HyperX Special Edition kit (1600MHz) is an absolute steal. Such a low cost makes this kit one of the most affordable kits designed for Sandy Bridge currently on the market.

The bottom line is: if you are thinking about moving to Sandy Bridge and are on a tight budget then I would urge you to invest in a Kingston HyperX Special Edition kit. They are low-cost, offer excellent performance, look great and are extremely low profile. Can you tell I'm impressed?