Corsair DHX Technology 'Dominator' Overview and Interview

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 8:23 am

Legit Reviews has been briefed by Corsair on the new Dominator series and today brings a number of the presentation slides to give you a better understanding of what this new high performance memory line is all about. We also get a chance to interview John Beekly and ask him some more questions to dig a little deeper. Sit back, relax and enjoy this fine read!

LR: Some of our readers are having sticker shock when it comes to the Twin2X048-8888C4DF memory kit, which is priced at $650 MSRP. Can you explain to our readers why such high pricing for your new flagship series?

John: Flagship parts are generally very difficult to produce, it takes extraordinary effort to build them. First, there is lots of engineering time spent developing the necessary RAM screens, then lots of laborious RAM screening that goes into each module. There are inventory issues also - if, say, only 5% of the very expensive RAMs you just bought will yield the flagship part, you need to figure out what to do with the other 95% of the RAMs you just paid extra for. So, a lot of the screening and fallout costs get built into the top-end part.

Article Title: Corsair DHX Technology 'Dominator' Overview and Interview
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/383/1/

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:13 am

Great read, some impressive design there and maybe a new trend for memory makers. Looking forward to seeing them in action!

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:55 am

That is a very interesting concept. It will also be interesting to see if it will catch on, especially at a "flagship" price. It is nice to see Corsair being innovative though!

Post by **Digital Puppy** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:14 am

Nice interview and scoop on DHX. I hope that the new concepts and innovations continue to trickle down to those of us who can't afford the $600. Of course I'm very eager to see Nate & Co. benchmark these bad boys to see if they are "legit"

Umm....Nate, just tell me if you want me to hold on to them for you....for safe keeping...yeah, that's the ticket......

eva2000 · Post by **eva2000** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:22 pm

the DHX technology sounds very nice indeed would be interesting to see them spread to the rest of the corsair range at reasonable prices

any idea of the fan cooling specs ?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:40 pm

eva2000 wrote:the DHX technology sounds very nice indeed would be interesting to see them spread to the rest of the corsair range at reasonable prices

any idea of the fan cooling specs ?

Not sure yet... Corsair was going to send out samples on Friday, but didn't get the fans in on time. Then it was going out on Monday and that was missed. Then it was supposed to be sent out to us last night, but the heat spreaders weren't baked on it. I believe today they are ready for shipment, but we will see. I thought I'd have these in hand by now.

eva2000 · Post by **eva2000** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:45 pm

will be interesting to see how fan cooling helps your tests

thinking of buying 3x 70x20mm OR 3x 60x25mm sunon maglev fans to upgrade my 2x60x25mm memory cooler

LOL

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:48 pm

eva2000 wrote:

Damn it eva... how many times must I tell you...

Rubber Bands and Duct Tape! HAHA

wait do i see a twisty tie holding the two fans together?

eva2000 · Post by **eva2000** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:31 pm

hehe yeah twisty ties holding fans firmly together hehe

i revised that cooler to have 2 pieces of cardboard down either size to tunnel flow the air hehe

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:23 pm

eva2000 wrote:hehe yeah twisty ties holding fans firmly together hehe

i revised that cooler to have 2 pieces of cardboard down either size to tunnel flow the air hehe

I think the double layered cardboard is restricting the airflow too much. You might want to trying a single layer box card board box...

eva2000 · Post by **eva2000** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:37 pm

Apoptosis wrote:You might want to trying a single layer box card board box...

Ah cutting edge technology

back on topic.. let us know how those dominators go... maybe put a thermal probe on HS and test too ?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:55 pm

yeah I'll have to do that... nothing came today, so it looks like a full review wont happen till next week.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:33 pm

They just arrived from UPS!

Here is a picture with them next to all four of Corsair's heat spreader styles.

First impressions: I really like them better in person. They look awesome and the heat sink fins are super thing. Unlike the Killer Nic where the photoshop image looks awesome and the product looks blah these look better in person. I know what I'll be reviewing over the weekend! Oh also the airflow unit actually suprised me. It's all made out of metal... no plastic here... It looks and feels really nice. I see no cut coners this time around... Kudos to Corsair!

I did get one update from Corsair on the fans though... seemed they made an internal goof on the press samples.

needed to update everyone on a minor mishap that has been brought to my attention. We contracted a third party to build the DOMINATOR Airflow fan for us. When we received the fans the other day the vendor had put a sticker under the fans with their logo on it, so we peeled them off and discarded them. Well as it turns out the sticker was applied to serve a purpose, it catches the tiny drips of oil from the ball bearings. Well we quickly realized that and re-applied a replacement sticker but the adhesive is different, so if you detect a little bit of oil residue – well that would be the reason.

If I post up more pictures you'll know what the white stickers under the fan are for. Corsair will have this patched up before the fans are sent out!

Post by **Digital Puppy** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:41 pm

Wowzers!

Make sure you let us know how loud that fan is. It will be interesting to see what kind of power all of this takes....

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:24 pm

Our kit installed into a D975XBX for fun...

Looks like Bad Axe doesn't like the SPD settings.

Noise Levels:

A passive cooled video card and north bridge was used with no fan within a foot of the system.

With the fans on at idle: 56db

With the fans unplugged: 53db

Post by **Digital Puppy** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:00 pm

Not bad...not bad....you should send it to me so I can be sure of the noise levels though....

hainer36 · Post by **hainer36** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:10 pm

oh come on...these babies are screaming.....give me away, give me away.....to hainer36

Bio-Hazard · Post by **Bio-Hazard** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 5:34 pm

They look interesting and the fans have a nice clean install, but I've been doing my own fan memory cooling for a long time. I guess it helps out when there's a lot of extra volts piled on.............

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 10:18 am

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=119315

I'm at the limits of my 4200+ AM2 processor, but I've managed to hit 1227.6MHz with 4-4-4-12 2T timings on the Corsair Dominator PC2-8888 modules.

It was very stable at 305MHz HTT and was able to run all the standard benchmarks. This is the first time that I have broken 10,000MB/Sec read scores in Everest.

edit... I just noticed that is an old version of everest here is the new one:

10,200 on the new one!

Razorbacx · Post by **Razorbacx** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:42 am

Dang! I'm definitely in the wrong business. Apop, you get to play with all the cool toys.

Just curious, what are your thoughts about the Fan Housing possibly interfering with other components within your system?

Thanks,

Razorbacx