CORSAIR CMXAF1 Fans - Retail

Worth Every Penny

Reviewed By: The Maelstrom Cat on 5/31/2007

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Out of the box to installed in the system: 3 minutes, tops. Quiet, especially when combined with a fan speed controller (or controlled through BIOS fan controls). Clearance for almost any memory, DOES NOT have to be used with Corsair Dominator series only, can be used with any memory stick that complies with "standard" height and size.

Cons: I guess if you had a couple of gorillas moving your PC around for you (being rough with it) the cooler could work its way off. The cool "mounts" to the memory retention clips of your motherboard via compression/friction only. If you wanted to make this more secure I suppose you could apply some nonskid rubber strips to the cooler finger clips. Personally, my setup works just fine as is.

The cooler does stand a bit tall, if you are using a low profile format custom case this probably won't fit, measure first, buy next.

Other Thoughts: Does sit close to my Zalman 9500 but doesn't touch (on an ASUS P5N32 SLI Plus). On the same board an eVGA 8800GTS installed in the first PCI-E 16x slot comes very close, but does not touch, the memory cooler.

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Airflow for your memory

Reviewed By: PirklePet on 1/4/2007

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: If you're looking to cool your oc'd ram, then this is a nice-looking workable option. The CMXAF1 comes with a 3 pin connector for easy monitoring from your mobo or an aftermarket monitoring device. It sounds relatively quiet, considering the fans are smaller, higher rpm than some others in my system.

Cons: Now for the bad news...the clipping system seems an afterthought. These fans are basically relying on your memory clips to stay on--in other words, they aren't very secure. The fan assembly easily slides left to right on the ram clips. The screws used to tighten the fan assembly onto the ram clips leave a lot to be desired...I tried adjusting the thumbscrews several times, but had little success in securing the fan. So if you plan on transporting your PC, it's a safe bet to just leave off the fan until you reach your destination. Also, I couldn't say if the fan helped cool my ram a great deal since I am not oc'ing too high.

Other Thoughts: My install includes a Aw9d-max, Rosewill Z3 cpu cooler, 2x1gb Dominator pc28500 and a bfg 7950gt video card. The CMXAF1 fans seemed to fit snugly amongst these components, didn't have to remove anything to get this mounted. It seems likely that these Dominator fans can cool non-Dominator ram as well, as long as the heatsinks don't exceed the height of the Dominator heatsinks.

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Junk

Reviewed By: Wizchip on 2/4/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: Easy to install as with all the same designs

Cons: System worked great in all ways.... until the NOISE started. Cheapest junk fans our of China... Stay away from this junk. Had the Memory and fans RMA with the company 3X and each time, before the memory could test out for over 2 weeks.. the fans failed.

Other Thoughts: If Corsair would only have ordered better fans, this could have been a great product.

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Reviewed By: on 1/17/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: if your memory is over heating, this fan will help.

Cons: one of the fans stopped working and others are making weird noises after only a month of being used

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Good Coolers

Reviewed By: PhrozenBlur on 1/14/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Relatively quiet. Decreased Temps of RAM between 5-20 degrees Fahrenheit WITHOUT the use of heatspreaders on the RAM. Moves a lot of air. Easy to install once assembled. Nice build quality.

Cons: Wish it moved more air. The mounting brackets screw on kind of hokey.

Other Thoughts: First of all. I ran 2 of these on a SuperMicro H8DME-2 board, a server board, which is why I ran these without the 16 heatspreaders I would have needed to buy. The RAM on this board (BTW I used a tower case) sits horizontally which impeeds case airflow slightly. This shouldn't be an issue if your RAM is situated vertically.

Secondly the side mounting brackets screw on with thumb screws. However, to get a secure enough tension that made me feel that the fans wouldn't slide I had to use pliers. This led me to discover that the top of the fans are not painted buy have a vinyl sticker that extends underneath the the screws. When I torqued the screws to my desired amount the sticker started to twist underneath. I don't give a (insert word that Newegg doesn't find offensive) about that but someone else might so I thought I would share. And if you understood what the hell I was talking about here kudos to you.

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