* I'm not affiliated to any hardware review sites nor being sponsored, results are based on my personal tests*
DISCLAIMER : I'm not responsible for any damages(burnt) sticks which may happen, should you not exercise precautions & had significant knowledge in memory OCing. The results are merely based on my sticks & should not be taken as the absolute results *



Introduction

There's no doubt on the branding name power of Corsair, especially since the DDR days when they were one of the earlier manufacturers to empower their foot into value & performance based memories. I will not divulge into the history of Corsair, but to emphasize right into overclocking. You can read more @ their website.



Packaging, Built Quality

The pair of 2GB Twin2x PC6400 (2x1gb) comes in a blister pack, easy & repackageable. The sticks felt 'heavy' & solid giving the impression of promising performance to come. They are rated @ 5-5-5-18 @ 1.8V @ PC6400 speeds. There are variety of revisions, and the one i have are 5.1. According to Ramlist, rev 5.1 are Promos. I would well assume they are, as obviously peeping through the heatspreader will void the warranty. The aluminum heatspreader has a nice smooth touch, with the XMS2 sticker stating the timings, rev & part number.

The sticks were bought from retails, no cherry picking & they are representative of samples you get from shops. Mileage may vary depending on REVs, Chips WW(work week), PC setup, stress tests method etc.

Test Setup


Test Bed
- Pentium Dual Core E2140 MO
- Gigabyte P35 S3L
- 512mb X1950Pro Xpertvision

They are several methods used by reviewers to verify the overclocked results. I'll be using Super PI 32M & Prime (multi core) as stress tests to validate the results. The data represents the value which passes both sets of tests. Tests are evaluated @ CL4 & 5,varying voltage and the maximum Stable Mhz is recorded. I'll be skipping the default volts and jump right into 2.0v-2.2v.

Memory Cooling

There are plenty discussions on the effectiveness of heatspreader, some do believed they do actually worked & vice versa. The design of the heatsink is the crucial point. Extruded fins, heatpipes, watercooling will definitely help in cooling & stabilizing the chips to a certain extent under extreme volts. Thermal interface in between the chips & heatsink is equally important, thermal paste, tape. However, in my opinion the casual Heatspreader on thisCorsair (like many others) are junks. They are merely for cosmetic & aesthetic wise. Therefore a mode of cooling is highly recommended, or rather a MUST on every rams should you decide to whack >2.0v. Fans are cheap & they do great job in cooling the iron burning rams.

In these tests, a 120mm is placed on top of the memory to cool it.

Results



Max @ CL4-4-4-15 @ 2.2v


Max @ CL5-5-5-18 @ 2.2v


Conclusion

- The sticks took me back by suprise especially @ CL5 speeds, closing up to 600mhz (DDR2 1200) speed. I did managed to boot them to Win XP @ 600mhz @ 2.3v, however, Prime would fail instantly.
- The CL4 results are nothing to shout about, but they are relatively good coming close to DDR2 1000 speeds
- Given a particular family chip, I believed Corsair has better quality (binned) chips on their memory.
- For sure, they are not meant to challenge or performed to Microns( D9GMH, GCT, GKX) which are proven superior
- They overclock relatively well, considering they are the lowest line of Corsair's Performance line, & with rm170 tagged, there are nothing much to complain about

This post has been edited by kucingfight: Apr 26 2008, 09:59 AM

Very nice indeed... 1160Mhz @ CL5

dude ..sishh

post some bandwidth scores .. everest
from 1:1 400 fsb at rated voltages and rated speed +SP32m

and compare that with ure
overclocks bandwidth with everest+ SP32m..

thats more viable to show how good the rams are if u say it is.


This post has been edited by cstkl1: Apr 26 2008, 01:58 AM

just want to ask... this pair of ram and dhx ram same spec, are they the same? coz this also is xms2 and the dhx is xms2... pening2 d..

DHX2 RAMs have different heat spreaders...

tq 4 info. the price in czone cost nearly to rm100 different just by changing the heatspreader. luckily i dont buy dhx, but my friend bought one, same revision as well. v5.1. may be i can 'ejek' him for paying rm80 for 'cosmetic'

i have 2 sticks of those 2x512MB lying in the dust.... currently using crucial ballistix tracer 6400 2x1GB ... corsair sucks... expensiveness~~

according to the TS review , is not bad at all , he mentioned in that range price , nothing to complain ! even D9GMH use a while slightly become weakly . last time i can do 550 at 2.1v and now i cant stable anymore . wonder why ...

you need to be extremely lucky to get those chips
normally only the first few batch are good

it's because the ram chips have degraded as u pushed over 2.0v through it for daily use

i'm not daily set over 2.0v ,just for oc purpose . i was set at 1.95v daily

Mine had always been running at 2.2v

better ensure to have active cooling. Even stressing on stock volts is burning

yup, agree, active cooling the ram are important especially its oc'ed and hot weather of malaysia... i've been active cooling the ram since the dead of my tccd few years back...

eh bro careful ar... crucial ballistix runs really hot... if used for long period of time will degrade slowly..

i think that applies only to tracer. ballistix runs quiet cool. im a tracer ex-user for 1 week. then letting go my ram coz cannot stand d heat and blink2 stuff...

lol bling bling