Well, I tattled on our favourite retailer to Kingston in a fairly detailed email. Of course, Outpost is now shipping the advertised memory, ha. Anyhow, the text of their response follows. It pretty much confirms what forum participants have figured out on their own.
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I have seen this once before. I have forwarded your email to our sales
department so they can decide what to do about it.
Here are some things I can tell you. The KHX3200 and KHX3200A parts are
slightly different. The KHX3200 has more aggressive timings and these
timings load at default. This can cause problems in some machines that
can't handle these timings. The KHX3200A was redesigned so that less
aggressive timings would load at default and you would have to manually set
them to get the optimal timings for the memory modules.
The KHX3200 parts have been discontinued. If the parts sold by this
retailer are genuine Kingston parts, they would be covered under our
warranty. But, because we no longer make the parts, they would have to come
in for testing and repair as opposed to replacement. We would not be able
to replace them with a different part number.
The packaging these parts come in is not Kingston packaging. Any module we
package, whether the part is brand new or returned by a customer for some
reason, is rigorously tested and repackaged in a black clamshell package
with a clear top and sealed with a sticker with our part number on it. This
is true for all of our memory regardless of the part.
If the warranty is for ValueRam, HyperX is not covered. ValueRam are
generic modules built to industry standard specifications for the memory
type (KVR400 memory is built to the industry standard for DDR400 memory).
Although HyperX is considered generic memory, it is not built to industry
standards (timings are too aggressive for that) and thus is not considered
ValueRam.
I hope this clears up any confusion. Thank you for all the information
about this retailer. As I said, I will forward this information to my
superiors so they can evaluate it and take the appropriate action.
Best regards,
Glenn Neumeister
US Technical Support
Kingston Technology