Verdict: Very cool and extremely overclockable.

Corsair was the first memory manufacturer to go beyond fitting simple heatspreaders to its high-end DDR2 modules and design a proper cooling system, the Dominator heatsink.

Whereas heatspreaders are simply glued to the plastic lid of the DRAM chips, the Dominator heatsinks are attached to the metal grounding plane of the DRAM chips, and are therefore much more effective at conducting heat away from the RAM. This means that the RAM will run cooler, making it more overclockable. It should also cope with higher voltages. The first kit to have the Dominator heatsink fitted was the TWIN2X2048-8500C5D Dominator, which we first reviewed late last year. As a PC2-8500 kit, the modules are guaranteed to run at up to 1,066MHz at 5-5-5-15 latency timings at 2.2V. The modules are EPP-compatible and have lots of overclocking potential, as they were happy to run at 1.18GHz when we increased the voltage to 2.5V, and 1.2GHz when we slackened the latency timings to 6-6-6-18.

Although Corsair has launched even higher-spec Dominator kits, this kit remains one of the best high-frequency and most overclockable DDR2 kits that money can buy. As such, it's definitely worth shortlisting.

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