Review: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4-2800 (CMK16GX4MA2800C16)

Conclusion

The Intel X99 platform's newest technology is DDR4 memory. Designed to scale to 4GHz-plus in the coming years and offering improved efficiency and power consumption to boot, it can be considered an evolution of incumbent DDR3.

But adopting any new technology comes a cost, literally, as the cheapest 16GB (4x4GB) packs attract a 50 per cent premium over readily-available DDR3 of the same speed but equipped with better timings.

Corsair is plying the premium end of the market with Vengeance LPX and Dominator modules. Due to Intel-imposed limitations running fast DDR4 memory requires XMP settings to adjust the base clock and CPU frequency. Our testing shows Corsair's Vengeance LPX is a few per cent faster than regular 2,133MHz memory using the same latencies, but, for some reason, most likely due to the chipset, falls short in Rome: Total War II.

The real question is whether they're worth the the £80 premium over a basic set. For most people the answer is no, but if you can afford the $999 Core i7-5960X and want to extract every last bit of performance out of it, premium memory can be justified... just don't expect huge gains.

The Corsair Vengeance LPX 2,800MHz memory is a niche product for a niche market, so we'd only recommended it to users who have their heart set on the premier Haswell-E CPU.

The Good

Suited for the Core i7-5960X CPU
Attractive, well-built modules
Available in a choice of colours

The Bad

Significant price premium over 2,133MHz memory
Minor performance improvements in most apps

HEXUS.awards

Corsair Vengeance LPX 2,800 DDR4 16GB (4x4GB)

HEXUS.where2buy

The Corsair Vengeance LPX 2,800 DDR4 memory 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.