Verdict: Cheap and reasonably overclockable, but nothing special

While Corsair is best known for its high-quality, overclocking-friendly RAM, it also produces a range of cheaper memory known as Value Select.

Hidden in the middle of the VS1GB667D2 name is a clue to this kit's specs. It's rated as PC2-5300 DDR2, so it's guaranteed to run at up to 667MHz. Its latency timings are very slow at 5 - 5 - 5 - 15. To keep down costs, Corsair hasn't outfitted the DIMMs with any heatspreaders, not that this really makes a difference.

Lower latency timings have less effect on performance with DDR2 DIMMs than with DDR DIMMs, so the VS1GB667D2 sped through our benchmarks at almost exactly the same speed as the more expensive kits. The only exception to this was the SuperPi 32M test, which was slower due to its lower bandwidth.

The VS1GB667D2 wouldn't overclock beyond 667MHz at its stock timings but, by dropping the timings to 6 - 6 - 6 - 18 and increasing the voltage to 2V, we overclocked it to 800MHz. This is a respectable overclock for such a cheap kit, although Crucial's equally cheap CT2KIT12864AA53E kit overclocks by much more.

The VS1GB667D2 is one the cheapest 2GB kits on the market, but even this isn't enough to warrant a recommendation over the awesomely overclockable Crucial CT2KIT12864AA53E kit, which costs £14 more and overclocked to 1,066MHz.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• Shuttle XPC SX48P2 Deluxe - Desktop PCs
• SilverStone Raven - Peripherals
• Raptor Gaming M3 Platinum - Peripherals
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 - Processors
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Graphics cards
• DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS - Motherboards
• BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCX MaxCore - Graphics cards