HyperX is known for producing enthusiast RAM and SSDs, and at this year’s show, Kingston unveiled two new SSD products: the M.2/PCIe Predator and SATA III Savage. If these names sound familiar, it’s because Kingston recently switched-over its system memory kit branding to the same Fury, Savage, Beast/Predator naming scheme.

Our YouTube following has grown substantially over the past year, largely thanks to the tremendous support of our regular readers and active community. Having recently hit a milestone of 2,000,000+ video views on YouTube (with hundreds of millions of minutes of content consumed), we announced that we'd like to give back to the community with some big hardware prizes.

Our YouTube channel just recently hit 2,000,000 views and the website is receiving approximately 3.5 million pageviews per year these days. Things are going well – GN is growing up. In light of our tremendous success this year, specifically celebrating the growth in YouTube channel popularity, we're excited to announce our next big giveaway!

Shortly after Game24 and the GTX 980 unveil (fully benchmarked here), we visited the likes of NZXT, HyperX (Kingston), CyberPower, and others to learn more about the inner-workings of the industry. This is something we're making a habit of, including previous tours of nVidia's phenomenally expensive silicon failure analysis lab and Kingston's SMT line, where we showed how RAM & SSDs are made.

We found a fairly high-end system in the CyberPowerPC meeting room that was begging for video coverage. The unit used a modified version of NZXT's S340 enclosure, through the window of which we spotted nVidia's new GTX 980. As for the processor, the custom-built rig was running on Intel's Devil's Canyon 4790K CPU overclocked about 10% (it's capable of more, but would require fine tuning due to thermal constraints). The CPU was topped-off with NZXT's X61 that we've previously spoken about – a 280mm CLC powered by Asetek, staking variable pump speed as its claim to fame – and the host platform was Gigabyte's SOC Force Z97 overclocking motherboard. A full 32GB of HyperX Fury memory (clocked at 1866MHz natively and easily overclocked) was found slotted into the board. We previously reviewed HyperX Fury over here.

Most of the tech industry’s major players are located somewhere in California – a state that has, in our experience, proven to be very large and very saturated with horrifyingly bad drivers. It also happens to be saturated with leading technology innovators and game development companies; the hardware split is pretty even between SoCal (Orange County, Fountain Valley, LA, Industry) and NorCal (home to Silicon Valley). Game developers mostly hang-out in San Francisco and San Jose.

We’ve previously toured both regions, with some of our best content focusing on nVidia’s silicon failure analysis lab (San Jose) and Kingston’s automated RAM/SSD manufacturing line. Following Game24 and the GTX 980 launch, we returned to the Los Angeles area for more. In our most recent California trip, we visited NZXT, HyperX, CyberPower, and iBUYPOWER to see their assembly lines and warehouses.

Hardware naming conventions tend to be about as sensible as salad names at a health bar. We've previously dissected the ASUS naming convention, Intel's chipset names, and AMD's chipset names. With the advent of DDR4 on Broadwell-E (X99 / LGA2011-3), it's time for manufacturers to shuffle the memory lineup around.

We had the opportunity to speak with Kingston (HyperX) and Corsair while at PAX Prime 2014. Other memory manufacturers were unavailable, so we'll visit them in future posts. This content looks specifically at what the product names mean between Kingston's HyperX lineup and Corsair's DDR4 lineup.

There's no argument that RAM has become commoditized in the marketplace. This has been reinforced by furthered emphasis on appearances and the prevalence of high-capacity modules at relatively stabilized prices. DDR3 DRAM fabrication has also improved its yield steadily through the years, making high-frequency memory more abundant than ever. Kingston and Corsair recently told us that they've each almost completely halted production of 1333MHz consumer memory, primarily because the yield of DDR3-1600 is so high that lower frequencies actually have diminishing returns on cost.

As it turns out, RAM also feels like a relatively uninteresting component when selecting parts for a new system -- such is the nature of a stable product. It's similar to buying gas, in that regard; serious enthusiasts might deliberate over suppliers and octane specifications, but most users just fill up with the most convenient and affordable source. That's not to diminish the importance of quality RAM, though it does currently feel like a fairly stagnated market. Things will change in the face of DDR4.

Technically, Kingston's been running its HyperX business unit purely as "HyperX" in recent days; the new Fury RAM doesn't even feature the Kingston branding, and the same goes for the Cloud headset that's scheduled to ship in short order. In speaking with Kingston at PAX East, it was conveyed to us that the HyperX unit is remaining under Kingston, but will be branded independently in its gaming target. The HyperX brand is stronger than ever, we were told, and has grown from a sort-of "side project" at its roots to a major competitor in the gaming hardware market.