Because red makes everything - even Corsair's latest RAM - faster.
Triple channel memory kits for Nehalem's new platform are pretty common, with not too much to differentiate them. They're all DDR3, and contain either 1GB or 2GB per stick for a total of 3GB or 6GB.While whichever size you pick won't necessarily affect performance too much (unless you're running a bloated Vista install), the real important part is the specs - or are they? Kits out there run from 1066MHz all the way to 2000MHz; the Dominator kit here falls in at 1866MHz.
Running these settings at the XMP or Xtreme Memory Profile (settings which also include 8-8-7-20 timings and a voltage of 1.65V), gives us an easy way to get the performance expected out of the sticks. It's a nice balance between frequency and timings, but we weren't satisfied with just leaving it at stock settings so we bumped the frequency to 2000. Sadly we had to increase the timings too, and at a rather slow 9-9-9-27 this makes the performance pretty similar overall.
They were easy to push beyond this too - but performance began decreasing after this speed due to high latencies. The one thing that didn't really affect these sticks was heat, and they became mildly warm when under load. Corsair includes a dual-fan add-on that clips over the memory sticks - this didn't appreciably increase overclocking performance and instead generated an annoying 72dBA of noise. Unless you're computing in 50 degree ambient temps, you should be okay without this fan.
The sticks themselves are black with a red sticker, topped with cherry red fins. They're entirely made of machined aluminium, and exude a lot of quality. With a price that's about $140 cheaper than the first Corsair Dominator triple kit we looked at back in Issue 96, this is a great choice for a rig with a decent enough amount of headroom for some tweaking.
Issue: 109 | February, 2010