Corsair's XMS2 Dominator: The World's Fastest DDR2?
Nice memory :^)
Forget the silly fan-thing (whose fans should be blowing up not down, right?) and be happy that speeds are getting higher and timings are becoming tighter.
I bet those sticks will do CAS3 at 800DDR, no problem LoL!
We designed the fans so that they would push airflow across the fins of the heatsink. Drawing in cooler air and blowing it over the modules proved most effective in our testing.
The Dominator design was done in order to drive technology forward. It's not a price/performance ratio part, just like a Ferrari isn't. Our goal was to make the world's fastest memory and we did that, at a price. It's extremely difficult to make.
The ICs used are the same ICs we've used on the 6400C3 modules, Micron rev D. There's no secret to this, as every manufacturer with high-end memory is using these ICs. The difference is these are screened at the IC level extensively, then built onto modules and screened at the module level as well. Then we add heatsinks and screen them once again. We have, without a doubt, the most extensive and effective screening process in the industry, as shown by our rock-solid stability and the fact that we make the world's fastest DDR2 modules.
For some of you guys who say "this is nothing you couldn't do yourself", you're right.
If you had a few hundred thousand ICs from Micron and a $100,000 tester, you could screen the ICs yourself. You could pay a few thousand dollars to have somebody custom design you a PCB for the memory, then a few more thousand dollars to buy a bunch of them. Then if you had some soldering equipment designed for RAM you could build up some modules, and if you had a few of the world's fastest DDR2 motherboards (right now, the M2N32-SLI from Asus is pretty nice) you could test them at that level, provided you had a good memory test. Then you could go to a machine shop and have them craft you a couple of heatsinks for them. You put those on there, and screen them again, and after all that, your 100,000 ICs have turned into maybe 10 modules that will do 8888 at C4 @ 2.4V. So you take the rest of your ICs and make 6400C3s, 6400C4s, 8500C5s, etc. And those 10 modules cost more than they might be worth to some people, just like that Ferrari costs more than it would be worth to some people.
But then again, some people want the fastest in the world and are willing to pay for it.
We still make great value parts. The 5400C4s are good overclockers, the 6400 parts are great as well.