Corsair 4GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Memory Kit Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Corsair TW3X4G1600C9DFNV memory kit was found to be a solid performing memory kit that was a joy to work with and overclock as it did nearly everything I wanted it to do. This was my first time trying out the Samsung ICs and I’m very impressed by what they can do when it comes to both frequency and timings. They do seem to like a ton of voltage, which might scare some off, but for others it won’t be a big deal. If you are running more voltage to the memory be sure to use some kind of an active fan cooler to prevent things from burning up under the extra heat. Corsair has a cooler called the AIRFLOW for under $20.00 that works great for this and is designed to be used with the DHX heat sinks.

When it comes to pricing this kit runs $384 with free shipping, but there is a $40 mail-in-rebate that is valid through July 31,2008. that helps bring the final price down to $344. If you look at the rebate you’ll notice it also applies to another kit with the same frequency and timings, but is only $224 with free shipping. The big difference between these kits are the IC’s and that the other kit is not NVIDIA EPP2.0 SLI-Ready. Are those two differences worth $120 to you? That is something you will have to figure out depending on your budget, but the Samsung IC’s are fun to overclock! Something else interesting when it comes to pricing is that the equivalent micron based memory kit runs $489, which runs at 1600MHz with Micron ICs at 7-7-7-20 timings. That places the Samsung kit $145 less than the Micron kit and with some extra voltage the Samsung based kit we reviewed here can do the same thing and save you a good chunk of change! Pricing on these memory kits are all over the place, so be sure to do some research (pat yourself on the back if you are reading this) before picking a DDR3 memory kit up.

You might have noticed that we didn’t test this kit on an NVIDIA chipset as we wanted to try it out on a more common platform and Corsair didn’t have any concerns with this testing method. I think our test results speak for themselves as this is the first time I have seen this kit pushed down into CL6 range. Since this memory kit can do tight CL6 timings at 1600MHz and can match the CL7 timings at 1800MHz just like other more expensive kits, it gives me great pleasure to give Corsair the Editor’s Choice award for another product well done.

Legit Bottom Line: The Corsair TW3X4G1600C9DFNV memory kit does a great job showing off what Samsung DDR3 ICs can do and our testing shows that Micron based modules finally have some competition when it comes to overclocking and performance.