The pride of Corsair’s line of DDR2 memory chips and the latest member of XMS2 technology is the Corsair Dominator RAM. These memory chips are made specifically for computers running on the latest operating systems; Vista and Windows 7.

Anyone who has ever used these systems on a computer with standard DDR or DDR2 memory chips will have experienced slowness and lag when they open up applications or perform system functions. While it may be possible to overclock the cpu of the computer to achieve greater speed, that may result in the memory chips overheating and will eventually lead to a system crash.

It is not just operating systems which are memory-hungry nowadays, the latest versions of popular applications, including games, animation programs and Microsoft programming suites will need the your cpu to run at maximum overclocked speed for ease of use. Overclocking, by the way is making your cpu run faster than its declared speed. Not all cpu’s can be overclocked though. The highest overclocked speed on which a Windows system was run is 800 mhz.

The tendency to burn the memory chips is a deterrent to speeding up the computer … previously, that is. With the Corsair Dominator RAM, you can set your cpu to perform at speeds of 800 mhz without the risk of toasting your memory chips and crashing you computer.

Heat generated and contained in the Corsair Dominator RAM is diffused in two ways. First, the conventional (but much improved) aluminum heat-spreader technology is applied to siphon out the heat from the memory chips and release them into the air.

Secondly, the manufacturers of Corsair Dominator RAM invented a method that they call the Dual-Path Heat Exchange (DHX). The mechanism involves mounting the memory chips at a higher elevation than usual on the motherboard. The extra height serves to house a medium which transfers some of the heat in the memory chips down to the copper groundings of the motherboard.

Motherboards that are Corsair Dominator compatible usually have more copper at the base of the circuitry to absorb heat from the memory.

With two systems working to keep the memory chips cool, maximizing your computer’s speed will no longer be an issue to deliberate on.

I ordered it back in late May and didn’t receive it until June 7, which aggravated me to no extent; but that really has no bearing on the performance and reliability of the RAM itself. I was actually pretty shocked at what I found out.

With the Patriot Gamer Series, I have frequently—over the last couple of weeks—attempted to overclock my Dell XPS system. It’ll sure get past the 1600Mhz standard, and with flying colors I may add. If you’d like to see the screenshot, just email me and I would be glad to show you.

The “enhanced” latency of 9-9-9-24 almost sounded too good to be true, especially considering my past experiences dealing with DDR2 (as well as the legacy DDR1). But, ALAS, it passed that test as well. I’m not saying it’ll always be that fast, but it’s a pretty good indicator that it’s on top of its game.

Henceforth, I feel compelled to review it to a couple of other RAM producers—Kingston and Mushkin (a couple of other highly-esteemed products, and of which Kingston I’ve actually used in the past). What I found out, in summary, is that I can’t say that the Patriot modules “far exceeded the other two”—but its definitely right-on par with the other two (with similar configurations).

When I finally got it, it arrived in tastefully-designed plastic covers—good for static electricity prevention (which will, subsequently, almost guarentee you don’t destroy a stick). Other than that, though, and the late delivery issue, it’s a well-rounded, awesome product.

My friends system (at least the part that’s relevant to this review) is a customized HP Pavilion with an i7-920 Intel processor that boasts a 2.66 gigahertz (I love to spell it out, yes) with 1 megabyte L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache and QPI technology. It also came with 8 gigabytes of PC3-8500 DDR3 RAM modules—which, me being the power hungry-never satisfied techy, I just had to upgrade to an additional 8 gigabytes—bringing the total memory to a whopper of about 16 gigabytes (give or take a few kilobytes, I presume).

Two 4 gigabyte chips  from Kingston and designated “LoVo” (low-voltage), with the proprieatary HyperX technology embedded and in addition to my existing RAM, it makes for one helluva setup! Sometimes I even wonder if I could run an entire datacenter with this setup, haha. Added to that the frames per second(FPS) I get out of my Rampage Extreme video card quite literally—and pardon the expression—“out the frame”.

I love this product X 1,000. I can’t really say it enough; Kingston makes some of the best computer components ever—and I’m not even saying that to only benefit them, but my fellow online gamers and work associates.

Corsair has been one of my favorite tech products for a long time. The XMS3 RAM modules are no exception; they are (combined) 4 gigabytes of DDR3 memory that has 1600 megahertz standard rating.

From an article I read, they will actually sustain 1760Mhz with a heatsink, but that’s more or less subjective and could very well be….well, more or less. However, the fact that they are DDR3 is very important to me because both of my systems use the i7 core and are very powerful, yet very “hungry”. They also claim to support i5 processors, which they obviously will, considering my former statement.

I really enjoyed the newer DHX RAM innovation. It stands for Dual Path Exchange and dictates that larger heatsinks be employed, as well as a dedicated heatsink that keeps modules and attachments nice and cool. In addition, the Corsair product here is fully-SLI compliant to match NVIDIA’s standards in motherboards and power supplies.

The lifetime warranty claim is great, I just hope that is honored—as I have yet to file a claim on any RAM modules I’ve ever bought, but that fact alone should be of pretty good confidence. Another thing, I would honestly trust Corsair any day over the likes of Cambex, Silicon Power or Southland. Not bad products on their own, but Corsair is a personal favorite due to its flawless reliablity and performance it’s given me over the years.

Just in case you were wondering, one of my systems is a Phenom II 965 Black series and it has, installed, a twin-pair of these Corsair XMS3 modules. Given that it’s running at 4.1 gigahertz and has a AMD X4 processor, it’s lightning-fast and the RAM modules keep up with it so nicely—almost makes a grown-man cry. Almost, that is!

The big difference between inferior computer memory brands and Corsair XMS2 RAM is that the XMS2 can withstand speeds up to 800 mhz without any sign of over-heating. The makers of this superior brand of memory had in mind the ever-increasing requirements of new computer software.

With each passing year, users and software developers alike are looking towards more and more functionality, better graphics and sound in computer programs. The trend is not likely to abate in the near future. On the contrary!

The Corsair XMS2 RAM is especially designed to facilitate the smooth and prolonged operation of large operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows 7. If you are planning on upgrading your OS to these newer ones, you should be looking for this memory chip in your pc.

Besides, when you realize that it is not just operating systems that have become memory intensive but most of the applications running on them as well, there is no way that you can expect prolonged fast activity from an upgraded system with the latest applications running on it than by availing yourself of heat-proofed and failure-safe RAM.

The Corsair XMS2 derives its heat-resistance from the DHX (dual-path heat exchange) technology. This simply means that besides the conventional method used to maintain the temperature of memory chips at a safe level, it contains a device that transfers heat from the memory chips to the copper ground layer of the mother board. This first method alone reduces heat from the memory modules by half.

The conventional way of cooling memory chips is by the use of aluminum heat spreaders. The Corsair has an improved version of this type of heat dissipation mechanism too.

The Corsair XMS2 RAM is indispensible for gamers, computer animation artists and .Net programmers. If you belong in any one of those categories, you will appreciate how these memory chips can endure enhanced computer speeds without any undesirable side effects. Heat no longer is an issue in memory performance with the Corsair XMS2 RAM.