4GB SO-DIMM DDR3L from Kingston: a comparison review

In the comments on reviews of memory bought in China, people often say it’s cheaper to buy locally.
And, to be fair, I’ve said that myself.
But then I was offered the chance to review one of the products on AliExpress, and I chose a SO-DIMM DDR3 memory module, the so-called “laptop format.”/
Since I’d already bought exactly the same memory module locally, I decided to do a comparison review—and got some pretty interesting results.

So, you could say that in this case the need for the product coincided with the opportunity to do a comparison review. After all, it’s interesting to see how a product from China differs from one bought locally.

I’ll say right away that there isn’t much to write about this product, so the review won’t be very long and will consist mostly of photos and screenshots.

The memory comes in standard packaging. I’m sure anyone who works with computers has seen it many times.


Next comes the comparison. On the left is the memory I bought from one of the most popular online stores (I’ll call it the locally bought one from here on), and on the right is the same memory, but from China.
The differences start right here: the locally bought one was made in Taiwan, while the Chinese one was made in China, which makes perfect sense :)


Both packages include installation instructions.


There is one difference, though: the locally bought one comes with multilingual instructions.


The Chinese one, on the other hand, comes with instructions in Chinese only.
But the instructions clearly differ in more than just the text.


Both memory modules have chips on both sides, but the chips are different, even though the circuit boards are identical.


Here’s the key difference.
On the left is the locally bought module, fitted with chips marked Kingston; on the right, we can see the Micron logo.


But don’t rush to yell, “Ew, ew, ew, the chips aren’t Kingston—fake!!!111”
Everything’s fine; Kingston doesn’t make chips, it only packages them.
That is, they buy a wafer with chips, then cut them up and put them into packages at their own factory.

And even that isn’t always the case. For higher-quality memory modules, Kingston usually doesn’t use chips with its own markings, preferring the Micron chips shown above. So in this case, the locally bought memory loses out.
Link to the article; the photo shows Kingston HyperX FURY HX421C14FBK4/32 DDR4 memory


Or SK hynix.
Link to the article; the photo also shows Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 memory.


As we can see, the memory markings match exactly; the only differences are the batch number and serial number.
The quality is excellent in both cases; you can tell them apart only by the markings.


Both modules have an SPD chip that stores the chip specifications, speed ratings, serial number, and so on.


There’s nothing more to describe, so let’s move on to the tests.
Since the computer I bought this memory for is rather underpowered, I decided to test it in its “big brother”.
First, here’s the memory module information from the computer’s BIOS.


And now the first test: the classic Memtest. Four passes, no problems.
I could have run it longer, of course, but it’s already clear that the memory is working properly.
I was surprised that the program’s main window didn’t show any information about the memory module.


Aida showed a few differences between the modules.
1. The Chinese memory module lists the chip manufacturer.
2. The module bought locally supports Partial Array Self Refresh (a cell self-refresh mode that runs only when there is data in the memory banks).
The screenshot came out a bit small; click the image to see the full-size version.


CPU-Z didn’t spot any differences at all, apart from the manufacturing date.
By the way, the lot number is the same on the label and in the SPD information.


Next comes a wall of comparative tests in Aida64 Engineer Edition.
The module from China is at the top; the one bought locally is at the bottom.








All the tests showed that the module bought locally is noticeably slower.
I wasn’t satisfied with that, so I decided to run a more interesting test.
I created a RAM disk and tested its speed with the different memory modules.
I tried to keep the conditions identical for both modules: the computer was disconnected from the local network, the modules were installed one at a time in the same slot, and the test was run the same amount of time after booting the computer.
The test of the module from China is on the left; the one bought locally is on the right.


Overall, the offline module lost in the final test too, since the Chinese one proved noticeably faster.
In the end, the offline module will go into a small computer, while the Chinese one will stay in my main PC. I also plan to buy a second one just like it.

In the comments, someone asked me to run the test without loading Windows, so the operating system wouldn't affect the results.
I ran a simplified version of the test, doing two passes of Memtest.
To reproduce the test conditions more accurately, after testing the first memory module I let the computer cool down to room temperature.
Testing the first module—the one under review—took 3705 seconds.


Testing the module bought locally took 3744 seconds, 39 seconds longer, or about 1%.
The difference was smaller than in the tests run under Windows, but once again the test showed that the module under review is faster.


So, the verdict.
Pros
Genuine module
Memory chips made by Micron.
The module is faster than the one bought locally

Cons
Price
Warranty (getting service will be more complicated)

My take: this is definitely a good memory module. All the tests showed a clear, if not very large, speed advantage over the module bought locally.
The only thing is that the module bought locally costs about a couple of dollars less. But you might be able to save some money with Ali coupons; that's not an option when buying locally.
Overall, I recommend it from a technical standpoint. Whether it's worth the money is up to you.

I hope you found the review useful. As always, I look forward to your questions in the comments :)

The product was provided by the store for review.