Eight gigs is the new four, and if you're a casual overclocker looking at building a Sandy Bridge PC, this could be the kit for you.
With the issues to Cougar Point being ironed out, there's a whole new generation of DDR3 dual-stick kits on the cards for those building new Sandy Bridge systems. Corsair has a range of uniquely placed memory kits in the market that will fit these new systems like a glove, especially if you want to take advantage of Sandy Bridge's almost trivial basic overclocking.
Corsair's Vengeance range are precisely targeted as inexpensive overclocking models. They don't tend to cross over with Corsair's premium Dominator range but fill the niche for casual overclockers, or the set and forget crowd, who really can't justify the huge asking price of ultra-premium RAM kits.
The kit we tested was the 1,600MHz version with 9-9-9-24 default timings. We popped it in to our GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R test platform with an Intel Core i5 2500K. We managed to squeeze this 1,600MHz stock memory up to 1,880MHz at 1.575v without relaxing the timings from the default 9-9-9-24.
That's by far the the best budget memory overclock we've seen, but not close to the best we've seen from Corsair Dominator kits. What we need to take in to account with this is that this 8GB kit retails for around $150. That's value for money, even for a straight 8GB kit without the overclocking push.
Physically, the Corsair Vengeance kit includes a large metal heatspreader, which may offer impedence on some very tighly packed cases but won't affect the vast majority of people. This particular memory speed is also offered in a 16GB kit at around double the price, so if you really want to start getting a big RAM count up, you can do it with some confidence.
So all up this memory isn't the fastest out there, and it doesn't have the tightest timings or built-in water-cooling (and it won't make you a sandwich), but considering it's modicum of overclocking ability and very reasonable price point, its niche is a comfortable one.
Available from Corsair, retailing for $150.
APC rating: 7/10