Last June 2016, Corsair released a DDR4 memory that I believed to be one of the most sleek-looking and stunning DDR4 memory module in the market – the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4. The Vengeance LED is a high performance DDR4 memory geared towards enthusiasts, overclocker and gamers. It’s designed to not only make a PC system fast and smooth-running, but also make it look more pleasing. It’s undeniable nowadays that almost all components and accessories of a gaming PC has LEDs; the motherboard, GPU, CPU cooler, fans, keyboard, mouse and even some SSDs nowadays have LEDs. It is fun and it makes your system look unique, something you can brag about. Are you in the market looking for some of the best DDR4 memory in the market with LED lighting effects? Check out our Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 review below, this could be the memory kit that’s right for your system or gaming rig.
Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 3200MHz Review
The Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 memory modules feature a vibrant LED lighting with a subtle “breathing” effect. Its main purpose is to provide your PC a fast, responsive and reliable system memory, while at the same time improving aesthetics of your system. The LED lighting is paired with a large heat spreader for proper cooling and improved thermal conductivity. Corsair is using a 10-layer PCB and carefully screened RAM chips, from Samsung.
The Vengeance LED DDR4 is also optimized for the latest Intel X99 and 100 series motherboards, offering maximum bandwidth and tight response time. It also supports XMP 2.0 profile so that you don’t have to manually set it to run at 3200MHz, or whatever rated speed you choose. Corsair is also offering a limited life time warranty ensuring reliability and providing a peace of mind for its users.
The Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 memory kits are available in different capacities and speeds; starting from 16GB up to 64GB and speeds from 2666MHz up to 3466MHz. Aside from the varying speeds and size, there are also three color options to choose from for the LEDs; Red, White and the newly added Blue. No RGB yet guys, not sure if Corsair with implement RGB with their future DDR4 memory, but let’s hope they will in the near future.
Below is a screenshot of the SPD information of this memory kit taken from AIDA64’s report. You can also find additional information regarding this specific kit on the specifications table below. After that, let’s proceed to the next page and take a closer look at the memory itself.
Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 Specifications
Packaging and Closer Look
Corsair’s packaging is pretty much standard on their current lineup and you can expect quality packaging from the company. The Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4’s packaging is compact, but the memory modules are protected by a transparent plastic casing inside. The box itself doesn’t feel flimsy as well.
And here’s what’s inside the box, four Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 memory sticks that feels solid and you can tell that it’s made of high quality components and materials. The surface of the heat spreader is matte black and there are stickers on both sides; one is for the Vengeance LED logo and the other is information regarding the memory stick.
On top, you can see some angled cut outs where the light can pass through, giving it that nice looking effect. I have to admit, the LED bar beneath the cut-out panel is pretty simple, but the angled cut-out design made it really sleek-looking. I just wish Corsair also made the logo opened or cut-out as well so that the logo will have illumination too.
Also, the LED lighting effect on the Vengeance LED cannot be controlled. It’s constantly running on a fade-in / out effect, similar to a breathing effect. If you only get two sticks installed, it doesn’t look quite as good compared to when all four sticks are installed (on a Z170 motherboard). I’m not sure if Corsair will release an updated version of the LINK software where you can control the LED effects on the Vengeance LED DDR4, but it would be great if they can do that in the future.
The top panel is removable; I’m not really sure what the reason is but probably so that you can position the Corsair logo in an upright manner depending on the DIMM slots on your motherboard. Not all DIMM slots are position similarly in all motherboards. Some are upside down and vice versa, and it sucks when you bought a “shining” memory only to find out that you are forced to position it upside down or the memory is facing the opposite side, concealing the logo / name or facade of a memory stick. The top panel could also act as a lock, or holds both sides of the heat spreader.
The Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 32GB (4x8GB) kit is a single sided module. It means that all the memory ICs are installed only on one side of the PCB. Above you can see a closer look of what’s underneath the heat spreader. If I am not mistaken, I think there are only five LEDs per stick. The white bar installed on top of the PCB is the one that spreads and evens the light out.
Corsair is using carefully selected Samsung ICs. You can see from the photo above that the Vengeance LED DDR4 kit we have here has 8x Samsung K4A8G08 ICs. I can’t find further information about this specific IC or a detailed one, but this memory kit is rated to run at 3200MHz and can easily be achieved using its XMP profile. Depending on your current setup or motherboard, you may be able to overclock it and push it further, beyond 3200MHZ.
Test Setup and Overclocking
In testing the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 32GB kit, I am using a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7 motherboard powered with an Intel Core i7-6700K. The CPU is set to run at its default stock speeds. Below are the rest of the system specifications:
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64bit
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K
CPU Cooler: Cryorig A40 Ultimate All-in-One
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200MHz 32GB (4x8GB)
Graphics card: Galax GTX 1080 HOF 8GB
Storage Drives: Zotac Sonix 480GB NVMe SSD, OCZ RD400 512GB PCIe M.e NVMe SSD
Power Supply: FSP Aurum PT 1000W
Chassis: In Win 805
Here is a CPU-Z screenshot of the Z170 system, where the memory is configured using its Intel XMP Profile.
At first, I thought the Vengeance LED DDR4 doesn’t have any more room left for overclocking. However, I was able to manage to squeeze out more juice from it. I was able to push the frequency from 3200MHz to 3332MHz. That’s a very little increase actually. However, I know that the Vengeance LED can still be pushed further since I saw others reaching speeds of up to 3770MHz with the same kit we got here. This could probably mean that the motherboard that I am using is no longer capable of pushing it any further, or worst case scenario I got a kit that doesn’t overclock well. Nevertheless, I was able to push it a little bit more and using the same timings (16-18-18-36) as with the default XMP 2.0 profile.
Below are screenshots of the AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark results of the Vengeance LED DDR4 before and after overclocking. You can see from the results below that there’s a slight increase on the performance of the memory. Not bad at all!
Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 Benchmark Results
In benchmarking the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 32GB (4x8GB) kit, I used some of the popular benchmarking tools available, namely: AIDA64 Memory Benchmark, SiSoft Sandra and RealBench 2.4. The other memory kits mentioned on the graphs below were tested on the same system. Below are the results I got during my tests.
AIDA64 Engineer
Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achievable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.
SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2016
SiSoftware Sandra is a 32- and 64-bit client/server Windows system analyzer that includes benchmarking, testing and listing modules. It tries to go beyond other utilities to show you more of what is really going on under the hood so you draw comparisons at both a high and low-level in a single product. You can get information about the CPU, GPGPU, chipset, video adapter (GPU), ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals even .NET and Java.
RealBench 2.4
Realbench is a benchmark that uses open source applications and simple scripting to simulate real-world performance of a PC system. It’s designed for to show the difference: Before and after a PC upgrade. To gauge the real effect of an overclock.
Impressive results from the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200! I would expect that it would be faster than the memory kits running at 3000MHz and below. I can’t wait to see how it would fare with other 3200MHz memory kits out there. It’s also noteworthy to mention that the Corsair Vengeance was running on a tighter timings compared to other memory kits, considering that it’s already running at 3200MHz.
Price and Availability
The Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 memory module is now available. This particular kit DDR4-3200MHz 32GB (4x8GB) CMU32GX4M4C3200C16 currently retails for $209.99, based on the pricing from Corsair’s site at the time this review was published. The Vengeance LED DDR4 is available from 16GB capacity up to 64GB capacity, and speeds from 2666MHz up to 3466MHz. They are available in three different LED colors; White, Red and Blue. Corsair is also offering a limited lifetime warranty for their Vengeance LED DDR4 memory kits.
Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200 Review: Conclusion
The results speak for themselves and we see the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4-3200MHz kit running well without any disappointment. On top of that, I was able to squeeze out more juice from it, and I could probably squeeze out even more with a different overclocking motherboard. Do note that, overclocking is a case to case basis, and it’s not a 100% guarantee that you will be able to reach also the same overclocked speeds that others were able to achieve using the same memory kit.
In terms of build quality, as expected from a Corsair product, it’s made of high quality materials and well-crafted design that will surely add to the aesthetics of your system or gaming PC. I only wish that Corsair also made a cut-out of the logo so that the light would also pass through the logo. All of this does come with a price and you may need to pay a little bit more for the Vengeance LED DDR4 kits compared to other (regular) DDR4 memory kits. But, you do get what you pay for – a high performance memory, stable, reliable and on top of that a sleek-looking memory kit with LED lighting effect.
I don’t have anything to complain about this kit, as there are no major faults. I just hope that there was some way to control the illumination effect on the Vengeance LED. Probably no solution for that for now, but hopefully in the near future, we can fully control all the LED lighting using only one main control. Also, you have to take note that this memory has a taller heat spreader due to its design. It’s definitely not a low profile heat spreader (obviously) and you may or will have clearance issues with large CPU air coolers, specially with the likes of Noctua NH-D14/D15 or Cryorig R1 Ultimate and similar large coolers.
Finally, the Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 memory is an exceptionally well product, just like the Dominators (only more affordable). Its performance is very solid and can still be pushed further if you are lucky enough or knowledgeable in overclocking memory. Performance-wise, it didn’t disappoint us one bit, and if you are looking to add some lighting effects on your system, look no further and consider the Vengeance LED DDR4 on your top list.
