Corsair Releases 24GB Dominator Memory Kit

In our forums last week, I posed a simple question. For your next PC build or upgrade, how much memory will you be installing? If you’re taking the Core i7 route, then you’re likely to choose either 6GB or 12GB, and for everything else, 4GB seems to be the most common option, with 8GB being the choice for most higher-end enthusiasts. But just how much memory is overkill for most people? If you’re using your computer for the more casual reasons, even if it includes gaming, having a ton of memory isn’t going to help you out too much.

If I had to pick a “sweet spot” for various architectures, I’d say for in the high-end scheme of things, 12GB is fine for Core i7, and 8GB for everything else, because while it may be overkill for many people, it really allows for some breathing room. If you aren’t what you’d consider to be a power user, then half of each figure is fine, as it’s truly beneficial mostly with intense multi-tasking, or when performing tasks that happen to be total RAM hogs.

But what if even 12GB isn’t enough? As hard as it may be to believe, there’s a market out there for those who want insane amounts of memory, and for those, Corsair has just released a 24GB Dominator kit, for Core i7 platforms. Yes, that’s a total of 6 4GB modules. Because of this higher density, enthusiast frequencies and timings we’re used to seeing just isn’t possible at this point in time, so what you’ll see here are DDR3-1333 frequencies and 9-9-9-27 timings.

Though those are lower values in today’s scheme of things, if you’re actually pushing your PC to use so much memory, I’m highly doubtful that the lower specs are going to make any difference at all, because at that point, it’s the breathing room you need, not the ultimate speed. But, it also shows that if you go with such a kit and don’t need it, you’re going to have a lot more bandwidth to work with, but slower speeds, so for the vast majority of us, a 12GB or lower kit is going to make way more sense. You can still drool about the idea of 24GB in your PC, though.

“Corsair’s 24GB Dominator memory kit is perfect for high-performance computing applications, including computational research, HD digital content creation, working with multiple virtual machines, and other data-intensive applications,” said John Beekley, VP of Technical Marketing at Corsair. “The latest multi-core Intel and AMD CPUs, combined with sophisticated graphics processors from Nvidia and AMD, are capable of performing incredible workloads. Corsair’s 24GB Dominator memory kit enables the large number of concurrent threads and substantial datasets required by these applications.”