TheOverclocker Issue 34 | Page 30

EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD OC Hero Award CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM DDR4 3400 Limited Edition RRP: $999.99 | Website: www.corsair.com Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5960X • EVGA GTX 980 K|NGPIN Edition • GIGABYTE X99 SOCChampion (F4g/F4i) • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 8.1 x64 B efore you accuse this review of ignoring the exorbitant price of this kit, know that indeed this memory is expensive. That price is real and it’s unlikely to change in the near future. There are a number of reasons for this but one of them is because at this frequency, CORSAIR, at the time of release had no competition. Yes we’ve all read the press releases and what have you form other vendors, but in reality there just wasn’t any other 3400MHz kit that you could actually buy anyway. Some were listed but, they 30 The OverClocker Issue 34 | 2015 are perpetually out of stock. They, in reality just did not exist. This set however does and if you have the funds, this memory will be yours for a cool $999. Titan-X money indeed and if you have to ask why on earth anyone would purchase this memory, then it isn’t for you. This set is specifically for the X99 SOCChampion much like the old OCZ EL PC-5000 memory old that was specifically for the LanParty NF4 boards. You may get it to work on other motherboards, but there’s no guarantee that the X.M.P profile will load correctly. So not only do you have to have the financial means to spend a $1,000 USD on 16GiB of memory, but you also need to have a very specific motherboard to run this memory on. Should you tick both boxes, then what you’re in for is the most interesting set of memory for the X99 platform around. This memory isn’t exclusively for the professional competitive overclocker, but for the individual that only wants the fastest and is more than willing to pay for it (hence the importance of a working X.M.P profile), the vaguely defined Power user if you will. We’ve had ridiculously priced memory before, in fact we’ve had memory retail for as high as $2,000 USD. However, unlike that set of DDR 3100MHz memory comprised of single sided PCBs with Hynix MFR chips. This kit actually performs as it should and is half the price. So context is important here and what CORSAIR is providing is without question the highest performance memory we have ever come across. That’s all good and well, but it’s not why we are here. We are here to find out how it goes and what makes it worth the price over and above the high frequency. Well, it is primarily performance, but seeing as this costs a fortune all testing was done at the given 1.35V.