2GB Corsair 1800MHz DOMINATOR CL7 DDR3 Memory Review

Corsair’s First DDR3 Dominator Memory Kit

Last month, when I did my first ever DDR3 memory round-up I was shocked when I saw that Corsair didn’t bring a product to the market that was competitive with the other brands. Corsair kept telling me to hold my horses as they were still waiting for the right combination of parts to come to market before they released their high end DOMINATOR series for DDR3. A couple weeks ago a Corsair DOMINATOR kit arrived and we were told to put it through the paces on the various DDR3 motherboards that we have. The kit that Corsair sent out for review is the Corsair TWIN3X2048-1800C7DF G DDR3 1800MHz CAS 7 DOMINATOR with Airflow Fan. If you can say that seven times as fast as you can, then you are more 1337 than I am!

The past two weeks have flown by and to be honest we spent too much time benchmarking and overclocking this memory kit, but that is okay as it was the most fun we’ve had in a long time. The 1800MHz DOMINATOR CAS latency 7 memory kit has been designed to be the ultimate over-clocking DDR3 solution from Corsair and boy did this turn out to be the truth. Before we get into the details of this new Corsair Dominator memory kit, be sure to read our previous DDR3 memory articles to make sure you know what the changes in DDR3 are and how it performs compared to DDR2.

• Getting To Know DDR3 Memory Modules
• Intel P35 Express Chipset: DDR2 Versus DDR3 Memory
• Corsair Has Working 2000MHz DDR3 Memory Modules
• Corsair, Kingston, OCZ & Super Talent 1333MHz DDR3 Roundup
• Kingston 2GB ultra low-latency 1375MHz CL5 DDR3 Memory Review

If you feel you have a firm background on DDR3 modules and what the performance level was on various kits, then let’s take a look at what Corsair has been working on since June and see if it was worth the wait.

The DDR3 memory kit we will be looking at today from Corsair is one of the very first 2GB 1800MHz CL7 memory kits that use highly screened Micron ICs that have been found to offer great timings and high clock frequencies. The Corsair Twin3X2048-1333C9DHX memory kit that we reviewed last month was built using Qimonda memory ICs and with 9-9-9-24 timings it was found to have the loosest timings of all the memory kits involved in the roundup. Fast forward one month later and Corsair now has a kit running with 7-7-7-20 timings at 1800MHz! Not only have the memory timings gotten tighter, but the clock frequency has increased by more than 400MHz. This just goes to show how important it is to have the right engineers in place to select the right memory ICs!