The available motherboards for testing installation at this time has been shrunk down to the single EVGA 790i board that we will be doing our testing on so that is naturally all that we will be able to present for photos. I think it goes without saying though, that these modules are taller than a standard module so keep this in mind when making your CPU cooler and motherboard purchasing decisions. You will want to see just how much room the memory DIMMs have from both the CPU cooler and northbridge cooler.

Our test motherboard, the EVGA 790i Ultra SLI is clearly well laid out, especially considering the fact that the Thermalright Ultra-120 is turned sideways stretching out as far as pretty much any CPU cooler does on the market today...and all four DIMM slots have plenty of space. The Noctua NC-U6 cooler on the northbridge is about equal in width if not a little bigger than the stock cooling on this motherboard and it too has no issues with the DIMM slots. This just means that the added height of the Corsair Dominator DHX heat sinks really doesn't affect the installation in this particular setup.

The other portion of the installation is for the Dominator Airflow fan that comes bundled with select Corsair Dominator modules. This fan is comprised of three small 40mm fans and securely clips onto the memory module retaining clips. The fan is a very nice addition and matches the color scheme of the Dominator modules for a unified look. There are many reports of the fans dying a premature death and going out like a pack of cats brawling outside your open window while you sleep at night, but we have not experienced it yet. At the same time, we haven't used the fan all that much because we choose to go with a 120mm over the modules that also helps sweep hot air away from the Noctua NC-U6 northbridge cooler.

When booting the system at defaults, our Corsair Dominator modules come in at 667MHz at 9-9-9 timings. This obviously isn't specification and with most if not all performance memory, in order to run the memory for what it was designed, we need to make adjustments in the BIOS. The reason memory manufacturers program the SPD of the modules below specification is so that it will boot in a motherboard at default settings. You see, motherboards will usually only boot at the JEDEC specified voltage. For DDR3, this voltage is only 1.5v. This is far below the specified voltage for these modules of 2.0v at the rated frequency and timings. If these modules were programmed to boot at specified timings, they might not even POST at 1.5v. So the task of setting specified timings is up to us...but Corsairs support forums and technical staff do an excellent job assisting anyone with questions about this process. You simply need to head over the www.AskTheRamGuy.com and provide some of your system specifications and they will help you out. This address is provided on the package of all Corsair memory.

• Motherboard: EVGA 790i Ultra SLI
• Processor: Intel C2D E8400
• Processor Cooling: Thermalright Ultra-120
• Memory: Corsair Dominator PC3-14400 7-7-7-20
• Power Supply: Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF
• Video Card: HIS HD3870X2 512MB
• Additional Fans: 120mm AD1212MS-A73GL 2050RPM/80.5CFM
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.9 80GB SATAII 8MB cache
• OS: Windows XP SP2 (with all updates)

In past memory reviews we have brought up the fact that not all motherboards can guarantee that they will run DDR3-1800 memory. Some do list it as a feature like the up-coming review we have on the Asus P5E3-Premium. For the motherboards that don't, obviously buying a kit of memory that isn't guaranteed to run on a motherboard at the specified frequency is a risk you as the consumer are going to have to accept. Corsair does have excellent technical support and they will definitely help you as best they can should you run into that situation but the motherboard manufacturer won't, since it isn't supported.

The motherboard we are working with today doesn't specify this particular kit for guaranteed operation but it does specify that memory up to 1000MHz or DDR3-2000 is supported. So that means, as long as this memory is willing, the motherboard should allow it. Corsair does have a brand new kit of Dominator memory designed specifically for the NVIDIA chipset based motherboards specified to run at the same DDR3-14400 7-7-7 of this kit. In addition to that, Corsair also recently released a PC3-16000 kit that is specified to run at DDR3-2000 9-9-9 on NVIDIA chipsets with the part number TW3X2G2000C9DFNV. That may be a product to look forward to here on the pages of Hardware Canucks. For now though, we will have to settle for the already lightning fast DDR3-1800 kit in front of us.