Review: Corsair Vengeance Racing Red 16GB

Not only is a new extreme/enthusiast Intel platform a boon for motherboard manufacturers, it's also very good news for the memory manufacturers. It's been a long time since the memory guys had any good news, so the fact that the X79 platform comes with a special quad-channel memory configuration is great. Isn't it?

Corsair thinks so, and has released a new lineup of RAM modules set up for the platform. The latest range of quad-channel Vengeance kits are rated at 1,866MHz out of the box, with full XMP 1.3 compliance built in.

Like the G.Skill RipJawsZ kit, the XMP 1.3 makes for a slightly tighter integration of the use of memory profiling to make setting clockspeeds, latencies and voltages correctly for any supporting motherboard.

Memory matters

The difficulty for companies such as Corsair is that these days, memory actually makes little difference at the top end. The performance difference between a decent 1,600MHz kit and a pacier 1,866MHz bumper pack is small, especially at this thick end of the memory capacity wedge.

With 16GB of DDR3 jammed into your machine, whether it's running at 1,600MHz or 1,866MHz, it's going to be going like a greased weasel down a slide. The difference in gaming is negligible – for example, there was just one frame in it with our World in Conflict benchmark, which can easily be put down to simple testing variance.

More immediately obvious is the difference in actual memory bandwidth. The Corsair Vengeance Racing Red kit manages a whopping 42GB/s against the 1,600MHz G.Skill kit's 38GB/s. Even at the lowest ebb, you're still getting great numbers.

In overclocking terms, the Corsair kit was rock-solid at its rated frequency in our Sandy Bridge E tests, easily getting up to the same 4.8GHz overclock that the G.Skill kit managed. Neither kit will bat above its rated speeds though. As hard as we tried, we couldn't push the Vengeance Racing Red modules up to the next point, 2,133MHz. But really that's just willy-waving. Such speeds don't give you a huge amount of extra real-world performance for your money.

TechRadar Labs

Video encoding performance
X264 v4.0: FPS: Higher is better
Corsair Vengeance: 55
G.Skill RipJaws-Z: 55

Memory bandwidth
SiSoft Sandra: GB/S: Higher is better
Corsair Vengeance: 42
G.Skill RipJaws-Z: 38

Gaming performance
WiC: FPS: Higher is better
Corsair Vengeance: 112
G.Skill RipJaws-Z: 111

And therein lies the rub. This Corsair kit is on the market for around £133 at the time of writing, whereas the slightly slower G.Skill kit can be picked up for less than a ton. Is the extra performance really going to be worth the cash you're stumping up for the extra clockspeed?

As a gamer, the answer will most likely be no. Realistically for us PC gaming folk, even the G.Skill kit is probably overkill, and speeding up those modules won't give you much extra either.

For Photoshop obsessives and video manipulation junkies, £133 for 16GB of superfast DDR3 probably isn't a bad deal. But that's a bit of a niche market for such an enthusiast product. None of that can take away from the fact that these Corsair modules run perfectly at their rated specs, happily keeping the system ticking over during all the overclocking.

But as we've said, it's a niche product. Most of us wont need the heights of this kit, though the same could easily be said of the whole Sandy Bridge E platform. So, in for a penny and all that…

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Review: Corsair Carbide Series 500R White

Overview

Corsair has become known for some brilliant PC cases recently, and the Corsair Carbide Series 500R White is aiming to become another one.

We've tried connecting up components and trying to run them without a case, but it only makes the carpet smell funny. That burning component smell really gets the back of your throat, so what luck there are literally trillions of cuboid metal homes for your gear that'll keep them safe!

Corsair's Carbide Series 500R White is just one such case, and you should care because a) Corsair makes high-quality cases, and b) this one's fairly cheap.

Styled after the Corsair Graphite Series 600T chassis with a bit of the Obsidian 700D's angular form thrown in, this Carbide Series 500R includes four fans, six drive bays, a backplate with cable management and holes and rear CPU cooler access, and a sturdy steel build.

It appears legit, but are you in danger of being jipped by purchasing this sub-£100 case?

Verdict

We found no corners cut, no shoddy build quality (other than the usual slightly flimsy plastic drive bays, but what are those drives going to be doing in there, greco-roman wrestling?) and no missing features you'd expect from a mid-price case.

There's plenty of space to build inside and there's easy access to the back.

To fit in a monstrously long graphics card like an AMD HD 6990 you'll likely need to remove a drive bay though, which is a bit of a kafuffle.

We've seen a good few mid-range cases that sport just one fan, so it's a good sign to find a 200 mm fan on the 500R's side, and three 120 mm fans at the front and rear, with dust filters to boot - that's really good cooling capability for the price.

Now features and build quality are one thing, but every tech enthusiast is a sucker for aesthetics.

This 500R isn't about to offend anyone with it's design, but it plays things a little safer than we're used to from the current Corsair roster.

It's the Audi A4 to the 600T's Audi TT, basically.

You do get a lovely white led to play with via a toggle switch, but a certain corner of the enthusiast market won't find this anywhere near garish enough, and probably demand much more jutty-out bits and grilles.

Can't please all the people all the time, we suppose.

But this is a great value package from Corsair. It offers all the features of its rivals like CM Storm's Enforcer, but adds an unexpected level of cooling capability and above-average build quality.

If nits are to be picked, we'd like it even more if it was long enough to accommodate gert big GPUs more conveniently, and the area that the 600T sports a fan controller, the 500R has only a sad little black panel that does nothing.

The real issue is that there's so little (£30 at time of writing) in monetary terms between this and the excellent 600T (the cheaper black version, that is).

What's £30? In this case, it's the difference between a good case and a great case.

We liked:

Although a little more conservative than the lovely Graphite Series 600T, the Corsair Carbide Series 500R White is still a very pleasing chassis to look at.

It's also got a decent feature set, missing nothing you might expect from a mid-range, sub-£100 case.

We disliked:

There really isn't a lot to dislike about this great value chassis, just a few minor niggles.

The only real problem is the price is just so damn close to the price of the black edition of the excellent Graphite 600T case.

Final word:

Matches, and even exceeds, expectations for a mid-range case, but it's awfully near the Corsair Graphite 600T's price.

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Corsair, A-Data launch new SandForce-powered SSDs

Corsair has launched its third-generation Force solid-state drives, delivering SATA 6Gb/s speeds to value-minded consumers. Powered by the same SandForce SF-2281 controller as OCZ's Vertex 3, the Force Series 3 can reportedly hit speeds of up to 550MB/s sequential reads and 520MB/s writes, with up to 85,000 IOPS during 4KB random writes. By comparison, the original Force drives peaked at 280MB/s and 50,000 IOPs. The Vertex 3 240GB lists the same maximum transfer rates as the Force 3, except it supposedly offers 15,000 less IOPS.

Despite claiming similar performance to the Vertex 3 (which most would consider to be today's quickest consumer SSD), Corsair is pushing its latest drives with incredibly aggressive pricing. The 60GB is set at $139, the 120GB costs only $219 while the 240GB is $499 -- all of which are bundled with a 3.5-inch adapter and backed with a three-year warranty. As of writing, the 120GB Vertex 3 is going for $299.99 at Newegg, while the 240GB is $529.99. The Force Series 3 will launch worldwide this month, so keep your eyes peeled for a review.

A-Data revealed its latest contribution to the flash market alongside Corsair's announcement today. Unsurprisingly, the company's new S511 also employs an SF-2200 processor, and we wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it were an SF-2281. A-Data's lineup also consists of 60GB, 120GB and 240GB models with a peak throughput of 550MB/s reads and 520MB/s writes, along with 60,000 IOPS during 4KB random writes. They'll also come with a 3.5-inch adapter and are priced roughly equivalent to the Vertex 3 based on euro to USD conversions.