Corsair Vengeance

DDR4 continues to drop in price

PRICE $ 285 corsair.com

Even

though our extensive testing has shown that increasing memory speeds usually doesn’t lead to noticeably improved game performance – except in texture-hogging pigs like Fallout 4 – memory companies nevertheless continue the race to increase the speeds of DDR4.

This is good news for budget conscious gamers. As speeds get faster and faster, high-end, ultra-fast memory that was once beyond the means of frugal gamers is now actually quite affordable. Not cheap, mind: but not enough to break the bank either. That’s the case with this kit from Corsair. At $285 for 32GB it’s only a little more expensive than DDR4 2400MHz, but you get the added benefit of 3000MHz. And who can say no to more MHz?

Before going any further, we should point out that these are rather tall memory modules, thanks mostly to their heatsink with integrated LED lighting. If you’ve got a low profile cooler, forget about using these badboys, as they simply won’t fit.

At the top of the heatsink is a unique LED light that will look lovely through your Perspex window, and these are powered by the memory slots themselves. There’s no need for an additional power cable to power the LEDs. These sit atop a rather tall heat spreader, which should help these moduls maintain reasonable temperatures while overclocked.

Like all memory kits, XMP 2.0 is supported, allowing for instant topspeed performance with the flick of a single BIOS option. Corsair claims this kit has been optimised for the latest Intel X99 and 100 series motherboards, but our tests don’t reveal any evidence to that effect.

Each PCB is ten layers deep, and Corsair claims it bins the memory to find the most overclockable modules around. Again, this reinforces the feeling that these kits are targeted specifically at the overclocking crowd, yet the price doesn’t put them out of reach for regular gamers looking to upgrade.

If there’s one issue, it’s the timings of these modules when running at 3000MHz. Corsair has tested them at this speed with memory timings of 15-17-17-35, which are rather loose to say the least. However, the increase in frequency should help get around the added latency, so you won’t lose any performance.

It’ll be interesting to observe how low professional overclockers can

If you’ve got a low profile cooler, you can forget about using these badboys – they simply won’t fit

get these timings while still keeping the DDR4 3000MHz speed. Even when running at DDR4 2400MHz, the timings are still a little slow, with 15-15-15-36, which is considerably slower than we’ve seen on competing kits in a similar price range.

Whether you actually need DDR4 3000MHz is a debatable question, but the fact that this is only around 10% more expensive than DDR4 2400MHz means even non-overclockers might find this kit appealing, especially thanks to the addition of the pretty LED lights. BENNETT RING