Final Thoughts and Rating
Our bevy of benchmarks suggest that Corsair's 12GB Vengeance memory kit offers little real-world benefit over a cheaper 6GB alternative. That's true to a certain extent, but the benchmarks don't tell the full story. Instead, they serve to address a common misconception; adding more memory to your PC won't always make it quicker. Whilst upgrading from smaller quantities to 6GB can have a significant impact on performance, the benefits from 6GB and beyond are considerably smaller.
That, coupled with the fact that 6GB DDR3 kits are becoming available for as little as £60, makes high-performance 12GB kits little more than wish-list material for most. With many modern CPUs armed with a large onboard cache and an increase in use of quick-access SSDs, the performance benefit of more than 6GB of RAM is negligible for the vast majority of users.
But while performance certainly won't double overnight, a twofold increase in memory from 6GB to 12GB does serve an important function; it enables you to do more with your PC at once. Professionals using three monitors with half-a-dozen video editing, CAD design and bioinformatics applications open on each are going to notice the difference. Ultimately, you need to be running a seriously heavy workload to reap the benefits of a 12GB memory kit. Whilst writing this review, I have open an HTML editor, Photoshop, an FTP client, two Chrome web browsers with multiple tabs open in each, Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Excel and Windows Media Player. I'm still using only 2.13GB of the six installed in this Windows 7 machine.
The capacity of the 12GB Vengeance kit is overkill for most, but the quality isn't. If you're in the market for cool-looking memory that sensibly balances performance, overclocking potential and low-voltage operation at a reasonable cost, Vengeance ticks all the right boxes. The reviewed 12GB kit (CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9) is future proof, but most tri-channel users would be better served by saving £60 and picking up the quicker 6GB CL8 pack (CMZ6GX3M3A1600C8).
The Good
Comfortably cheaper than range-topping Dominator
Strong out-the-box performance at 1.5V
Aluminium heatsinks look the business
Has overclocking
potential
Limited lifetime warranty
The Bad
12GB of memory currently provides little real-world benefit to most users
HEXUS Rating
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3
(CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9)
HEXUS Awards
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3
(CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9)
HEXUS Where2Buy
The reviewed 12GB Corsair Vengeance memory kit is available to purchase from SCAN Computers*.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
*As always, UK-based HEXUS.community forum members will benefit from the SCAN2HEXUS Free Shipping initiative, which will save you a further few pounds plus also top-notch, priority customer service and technical support backed up by the SCANcare@HEXUS forum.
