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Corsair Dominator DDR2 4GB PC2-8500 Memory Kit Review

Jason Landals
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When Windows Vista was released, we were suddenly forced to rethink our standards for minimum memory in a system. With the current versions of Windows XP, 512MB or RAM could get you by, 1GB was considered the minimum, and 2GB was the power-user option. Vista caused an over-night doubling of those numbers. Thanks to the release of ever-more punishing games, and the drop of RAM prices, 4GB is much more attainable and far more useful. The Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit is just such a product, providing 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 memory for just under $150.

This memory kit has Corsair’s normal quality fit and finish, and provides you with two high performance 2GB modules for a decent price. They feature Corsair’s DHX cooling solution, which is unique to the Dominator line of memory. It includes an aluminum heatsink attached to the RAM chips, and more interestingly, the heatsinks themselvs are attached directly to the PCB that the chips rest on. Below are some additional highlights from Corsair. You can of course find lots of info on the product home page.

  • Extreme Performance
  • Overclockable Memory
  • Best of Corsair’s Engineering
  • Superior Heat Dissipation
  • Corsair’s Unique Dual-path Heat Xchange (DHX)
  • Optional AirFlow – Extra Cooling for Extreme Overclocking
  • Overclocking Now Made Easier with Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP)

As noted, the kit also includes Corsair’s optional AirFlow cooling system. This set of three fans mounts to the RAM slots by way of two clips, and provides active and direct cooling to the RAM. This is said to aide in overclocking, though if you have a good enough CPU cooler that moves enough air, it may not make any difference. We’ll have to find out.

The addition of the heatsinks that are part of the DHX cooling system make for a fair addition in the height of the chips themselves. Those with large coolers like the Cooler Master 212 should take note, as this may force you to either reconfigure the cooler or move the RAM to different slots. As for those of you with coolers similar to the ThermalTake DuOrb, you may just be out of luck and have to replace the cooler entirely or forego using this RAM. Your mileage may vary or course, but you are warned to be mindful of you system dimensions.

As for the DHX cooling system itself, it’s a rather interesting design. While I have seen RAM with standard heat spreaders, I’ve never seen an additional heatsink attached directly to the PCB. Corsair actually went so far as to design this portion of the PCB specifically for heat transfer. Hopefully this attention to detail will pay off.

Corsair’s AirFlow fan attachment is as simple as it sounds. It’s a set of three 40mm fans, mounted in a decorative aluminum chassis, that you clip to your RAM slots and provides extra cooling to your Corsair Dominator RAM modules. Now one might be wondering how louder such an apparatus would be, since most 40mm fans aren’t known for their silence. One more concern is the mounting system, which simply clips to the white retention clips for the RAM. So with so many questions on the table, it’s time to install everything and see how well it all works.

Test Setup

For testing we installed the Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit into the following test bed:

Since we are using 4GB of RAM, and we need it to be both recognized and used by the operating system, we switched our test rig to Windows Vista 64-bit edition. All benchmarks were then run under that OS exclusively, with the intent of seeing if there was a performance boost from the slower 2GB kit normally found in our test bed.





Installation

Though I was foreshadowing some doom and gloom a few paragraphs ago, the truth is that the Corsair kit was fairly easy to install once I figured out how it would fit in with our monster cooler of choice. I had to install the RAM into slots 2 and 4, rather then the usual 1 and 3. Alternately I could have swapped the fan to the other side of the cooler which would have given room for the RAM to go in the first two slots. That little bit of forethought might have helped when it came to installing the Corsair AirFlow fans. I could have avoided having the edge of the apparatus up against the CPU fan, which would have reduced some of the noise.

Unfortunately it wouldn’t have prevented the AirFlow apparatus from slipping off the RAM slots. I found that when moving the computer around in a case, if you tilted the motherboard on the backside (which would be the front of a standard ATX case) there was nothing to stop to clips of the AirFlow from sliding around. If the case was at a standstill, and the motherboard was at rest either horizontally or vertically, the cooler didn’t move. But once I started toting it around, and if I tilted the case on it’s front, I found that the cooler would fall off. This is particularly unnerving if you want to take your machine with you ot a Lan Party like Fragapalooza.

Synthetic Tests

To test the Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit, we had to get a little creative. It’s rather difficult to test the necessity of 4GB of RAM, since so few applications really take advantage of it. Performance was also a bit of a struggle, as there isn’t much difference in raw performance between our test bed RAM and the Corsair kit. Still we gave it a good try, with the likes of SiSoft Sandra 2009 Pro and PCMark Vantage in some synthetic benchmarks.

First out of the gate in our derby of synthetic tests is the software testing suite known as SiSoftware Sandra. Since we are testing memory, it only makes sense to focus on memory tests, and the first test simply probes at the raw bandwidth of the chips parked in the RAM slots. Though only a marginal 3% performance jump was produced by the Corsair RAM over our standard OCZ test set, this is still inline with the differences in chips when both speed and latency are taken into account. If overclocked or ran with tighter timings, the Corsair RAM could easily surprass its own stock results.

Next up in our run of Sandra memory tests is the Latency benchmark. Here we see an even more marginal improvement using the Corsair RAM. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the timings and latency settings on the Corsair RAM are lower than what is pre-programmed into the OCZ kit by default.

The same trend continued into PCMark Vantage, with a minor improvement over the competitors RAM. On that note, I would say it’s time to move onto some real world tests from a couple of games that should put some stress on the memory subsystem.





Real World Benchmarks

The first real world benchmark we took a stab at was Supreme Commander. This multi-faceted real time strategy game has some much going on during gameplay that it takes a fairly decent computer to take care of everything. That being said, it certainly didn’t need all 4GB’s of RAM to manage what was going on during our benchmarks. The Corsair kit posted a score only 2% faster then the OCZ kit originally being used.

Surely Crysis, the unslayable 800 pound gorilla, would put some stress on our test system. Statistically the performance boost came out to 7%, but realistically that was only 3 frames per second of additional performance.

Overclocking, Thermals, and Noise

I’ll start off by noting that, depending on you perspective, the Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit either isn’t that great of an overclocker or good for what you are getting. Admittedly this RAM is already pretty tight for a 4GB kit under $150. Most DDR2 4GB kits only run at around 800MHz. Being able to squeeze a little more performance out of it would be a bonus, and we were able to bump it just north of 1100MHz on the default timings. We weren’t able to tighten up the timings too much, but the extra speed did garner some additional performance gains.

As for any thermal improvements using the AirFlow fan, we tested it by using an infrared thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the heat spreaders. There was a drop of 2°C present on the heat spreader when the fan device was installed, which meant it was going to be installed for all overclocking attempts.

The noise of the AirFlow cooling fans were noticeable, but not too terribly annoying. Since I use an open bench tech station, and not a closed case for testing, I didn’t have the luxury of having the sound deadened by surrounding electronics and case panels. In this environment, there was only a 2dB increase in ambient noise. The whir on the fans was what was really noticeable, and were they installed in a case like the Antec P182 I wouldn’t have even noticed their presence.





Final Thoughts and Conclusion

So what is there left to say about the Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit? Well there isn’t anything new. At this point it’s easy to draw the conclusion that this is one of the best 4GB kits you are going to find on the market in its price range. There are some short comings, but they are mostly related to the accessories and not so much the modules themselves.

The Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit has a lot to offer to the power user and enthusiast. For a 4GB kit, it runs at a high frequency with at least decent timings. There is some overclocking room still, and a good tweaker should be able to eek a bit more performance out of these chips. The performance backs up these claims, nearly matching the performance of a better spec’d 2GB kit in every test. With all that in mind, being able to get this kit for less then $150 is like the cherry on top.

The AirFlow fan attachment is a nice add-on, but it isn’t without its quirks. The biggest of which is that the clips may not hold the fan on securely enough, especially during transport. Hopefully this is a problem limited to my test set and not indicative of other kits. The second biggest is the DHX cooling system, whose heatsinks may interfere with large CPU coolers. Other then that, the other gripes I have are just opposites to the positives, and only serve as a way to be contradictory. In other words, I’m really having to try hard here to come up with criticism.

In the end, the Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit is pretty well what I would recommend looking for in a solid 4GB dual channel memory kit. Its performance, stability and features make it desirable for all but the most hardcore of tweakers. That’s ok though, cause they’ll be spending twice as much for their boutique kits. This Corsair kit is the people’s RAM; just toss it in and enjoy.

The Good

  • High performance for 4GB kit
  • DHX cooling kit adds thermal headroom
  • Low price
  • Lifetime warranty

The Bad

  • AirFlow clips not the most secure
  • DHX cooling fins may interfere with some CPU coolers

Overall Rating: 9.0/10.0

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