CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1866 Laptop Memory Model CMSX8GX3M2A1866C10

Pros: The sticker on the RAM looks neat with its Gold and Black color scheme and the words ""VENGEANCE"" on it. It had a noticeable performance gain over my 1333Mhz Corsair sticks. For about $70.00, you get 8GB, that's more than 1GB per $10! Compatible with the Mac Mini (mid 2011) model. The Specs seem to outperform the Kingston counterpart. No problems so far. BENCHMARK: - using Geekbench 2.3.4 Tryout for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit) RIG: Mac Mini 2011 Mac OS X 10.7.3 (Build 11D50b) Intel Core i5-2520M @ 2.50 GHz COMPARISON: Corsair Vengeance Corsair Difference Percentage Difference Read Sequential Avg: 6771.00 6609.00 162.00 2.24% Write Sequential Avg: 10090.67 9991.00 99.67 0.99% Stdlib Allocate Avg: 3837.33 3837.67 -0.33 -0.01% Stdlib Write Avg: 5252.00 4066.00 1186.00 25.46% Stdlib Copy Avg: 6544.00 5370.33 1400.33 23.07% Total Avg: 6544.00 5975.00 569.00 9.09% Speed: 1866 1333 533 33.32% Price (as of 8/29/12) $69.99 $47.99 $22.00 37.29%

Cons: Price per Performance, for 9% overall RAM performance, you'll need to pay 32% more. Does not look as cool as the Kingston counterpart. As of today, the Kingston is $5.00 cheaper than this.

Overall Review: CONCLUSION: Rig - I used my Mac Mini (mid 2011) Intel i5 2.5Ghz for testing as it is the only machine I have that would use SO-DIMM DDR3 which is excellent for benchmark and testing due to the nature of Mac Minis wanting specific RAM. So asking the question ""does it work for a Mac Mini"" has been answered. It actually runs really well for the Mac Mini, most probably due to the 1866Mhz speed. I ran MemTest for the Mac and it passed with flying colors. No compatibility or DOA issues. Benchmark Utility - Geekbench 2.3.4 Tryout, yes, it's the free edition which only limits you to using only 32-bit. Physical Appearance - The Corsair Vengeance has a nice sticker on the memory chips with Gold and Black color scheme with the written words ""VENGEANCE"". I believe having that sticker contributes with heat dispersion in some way. Speed - The Vengeance does have some advantages over the control, in which this case, is the normal Corsair 1333Mhz SO-DIMM. Even though the benchmark states that it is only a 9% overall increase in performance, I did actually feel that it ran faster. One such instant is opening up minimized tasks. It did have a 25% increase in performance with the stdlib Write & Copy, which has lots to do with minimizing and maximizing, opening programs and any other function RAM is used for. The Read and Write Sequential was only 1-2% performance increase, though that isn't really important as data are Randomly Accessed, hence the Acronym ""RAM"". As for stdlib Allocate, both the Vengeance and the control subject were equal in performance. It's safe to say that the Vengeance is quite faster than the 1333Mhz Corsair sticks, I'm calculating somewhere in the 17% faster range. Price - Most techs will tell you, the easiest performance gain is with Memory Upgrade. In this case, for 9% overall performance gain, you will spend about 32% more than what you paid for with the 1333Mhz RAM. What does that equate to? Just $22 more and you'll get anywhere from 9-25% increase in RAM performance. For a normal guy, that's about 2-3 hours of work in their current job. I think that's worth it unless of course if you're an underpaid employee. Final Words - If you're the type of guy who tries to find every single way to save money while trying to juice out as much performance from their PCs, I suggest you stick with that 1333Mhz RAM you currently have because 32% more money must at least equal or exceed 32% more performance . But if you're trying to weigh out Performance vs. human work effort, then I suggest getting the Corsair Vengeance over that regular 1333Mhz Corsair. Why do I say this? Because working to earn $22 is worth it if I can feel a 9-25% increase in RAM performance for the rest of the life of my current PC setup. Graphs and Bars are good instruments to figure out cost effectiveness, but you have to consider the effect in the long run as well. In totality, I thumbs up the Corsair Vengeance.

Pros: I always feel bad for the manufacturers when I read through 1 egg reviews on products that don't deserve them. This is one of those products. On my Core i5 M560 system, WEI went from 5.7 on stock 4GB DDR3-1333 RAM to 6.8 with this RAM. They run great at DDR3-1600, CL8 -- why not 1866MHz, you ask? The first-gen Core i5 memory controller can't push them to their potential (BIOS blocks me from going further)! See below for more on this. First off: this RAM is 1866MHz RAM. All memory controllers DO NOT support running it at these speeds; you will need an AMD A6/A8/A10 or newer Core i3/i5/i7, with probably a few exceptions. It's highly likely that the people giving this RAM bad reviews (while Corsair's other lower-clocked Vengeance laptop RAM is being reviewed quite well) are using older laptops that can't break 1333 or 1600MHz. On that note, if your laptop is starting to age, worry not: you can still use this RAM at lower speeds but with the benefits of tighter timings that your factory-installed RAM can't touch -- if you can adjust them that is. Refer to your system BIOS or manual to see if you can adjust the timings. As you'll see below, these can do 1333MHz @ CL6... the cheap RAM included in your laptop is most likely 1333MHz @ CL9! Good stuff. These are rated to run at the following according to CPU-Z @ 1.50V... DDR3 1333, CL6 DDR3 1600 is missing from CPU-Z's SPD tab, but CL8 works DDR3 1866, CL9 DDR3 2050, CL10 As far as the RAM's physical properties, the heat output is no different from the previous 4GB kit installed and installation was a snap (literally). I plugged the RAM in a week ago and they have been nothing but 100% reliable.

Cons: No heatsinks! I got excited looking at the pictures -- but nope -- they're just black stickers with Corsair's graphics printed on them. Heat doesn't seem to be an issue at 1600MHz, but I do wish they would have gone the HyperX approach and put real sinks on these. Perhaps the heat output is low enough that they don't need them. Corsair's engineers have been doing this long enough to know; I'll take their word for it.

Overall Review: I plugged 'em in and forgot about them until now. They do their job, and if you think you need more than 8GB, you're kidding yourself... No-hesitation recommendation from me!

Pros: My system is an ASUS N56VM laptop with a Core i7 3610QM processor. This memory is a massive upgrade over the stock memory, which was Hynix 4GB DDR3 1600. Installation was a breeze. This memory was plug and play; my BIOS recognized it instantly and I didn't have to make any adjustments after installing it to get the Vengeance running at its profiled speeds. This kit was much faster than I expected. In Sandra 2012 SP4a, these sticks scored a 25 GB/s aggregate memory performance, a 4.5 GB/s improvement over the 1600MHz Hynix memory, which makes this Corsair Vengeance an excellent addition to my already beefy gaming laptop. It also vastly improved my framerate in games such as Aliens vs. Predator and Metro 2033, giving me a 40-50% improvement. This memory runs quite cool (and looks) as well, and you can't argue with Corsair's lifetime warranty.

Cons: There aren't any major cons with this memory kit. It lacks heatspreaders, but those are unnecessary since the memory runs so cool in the first place.

Overall Review: These are speedy, attractive, well-engineered memory modules. I'd highly recommend this product to anyone on the market for high-performing memory for their laptops or other SO-DIMM platforms.

Pros: + Fast, tight timings for its speed class + Stable, no errors. + Great Corsair Customer Support. Seriously, they handled every question I had, both intelligent and uninformed, wonderfully and promptly. + 20%-50% increase in gaming FPS depending on the game and your previous memory module. If you have onboard graphics that support higher memory clocks, this will really help you out a lot if you have cheap RAM in your laptop.

Cons: - This kit doesn't seem to appreciate running at lower speeds under all conditions and cheap laptops. It's very YMMV in this scenario. Make sure your laptop supports this memory before buying it! - While there were some increased speeds in media encoding and photoshop, I can't entirely attribute them to the memory 100% since it was somewhat random. At the very least, it certainly didn't hurt anything in these areas.

Overall Review: Laptop memory is notoriously finicky and grief prone. Especially when it comes to performance memory, which is what this is. This memory is designed for gaming systems or workstations. Not your run of the mill, cheapo lower tiered bargain laptops. I tested this memory in an HP, Alienware, Dell XPS, Razer, and MSI laptops. Only the HP wasn't qualified to run the memory and sure enough, it acted like all the bad reviews did. Here's the thing when using higher clocked memory, your motherboard needs to support it, your bios needs to support it AND your CPU needs to support it. It's astonishing how difficult it is to get all three on the same laptop. First, make sure your laptop's motherboard can handle 1.5V memory, then make sure it can handle the speeds. Chances are, if it can handle both of those that it will also have a CPU that is Sandy Bridge or better, or an AMD APU which can then handle being overclocked to run at those speeds. (I'm not talking about overclocking your CPU clock speed) Running higher clocked memory often requires the CPU to be overclocked, most bios handle this without you knowing. But on laptops it can raise up other issues, like heat and general CPU stability. So then when your laptop no longer works, you blame the memory and not the system builder. Make sure your laptop supports this memory. If your vendor can't answer that question it's time to get a new vendor as you have outgrown them if you need performance that they can't relate to. If you have a gaming/performance laptop, that especially uses onboard CPU graphics like an APU or Haswell, this will be a treat. If you have a regular consumer grade laptop, you're better off saving the money on a better laptop than just getting new memory. Just remember that if you have a dedicated GPU in your laptop that this memory won't provide huge speed increases, but it should still help your gaming if you have lower clocked memory.

Pros: Excellent looking kit. The Vengeance labels are decals, not heat spreaders. This is to be expected as there's often not space for them in laptops, but they do look better than plain SODIMMS. Compatibility is great. Worked right off the bat with my Lenovo T40 and Mac Mini computers (not running at 1866, but still working perfectly at 1333)

Cons: None at this time.

Overall Review: I have used many different Corsair products in many different machines. Each time they have been flawless. I would not hesitate to recommend Corsair products to any client, friend or family member.

Pros: Very fast ram. Nice compact heatsink. I have installed aftermarket overclocked ram in other notebooks & found the larger heatsink to be an issue, this wasn't an issue even in my ultrabook. Easy plug & play upgrade. Great price. Solid memory, not a single issue since installation.

Cons: The only con is a minor con, however, I feel it's significant enough to warrant dropping it from a perfect rating. The product features state auto-overclocking without any need for BIOS changes. To me this is misleading. I read this & felt that they may have found a way to circumvent OEM set FSB/QPI settings, which hinder laptop owners more so than desktop builders. In any case, I was disappointed when I found that my ultrabook would not run this ram at the stated 1866mhz speed & stuck at stock 1066mhz.

Overall Review: Even with 1066mhz speeds my ultrabook jumped from 5.9 WEI to 6.8 on ram score. Gaming graphics jumped up minimally from 5.1 to 5.2 however, the real show stopper is in my gaming laptop where it maxed out ram score at 7.9 with a simple plug & play modification.

Pros: Corsair Vengeance High Performance SODIMM 8Gb Dual Channel 1866 kit. I Installed this kit in a Dell XPS Ultrabook. The installation was simple and after a quick BIOS adjustment to set the speed to 1866 and a reboot it was no issues after. I immediately noticed a change in response time with the mouse. After loading a few programs switching back and forth there was much quicker response then the stock 4 Gb 1333 memory. I left the timings alone and they were 10-10-10-27. I really had no issues with this memory. It is probably the easiest upgrade to make with a notebook. I ran 10 passes of mentest86 with no errors. It came appropriately packaged which included was a copy of the lifetime warranty. The main benefit from this ram is its very fast.

Cons: The one con I could see was the sticker on the side was not applied straight and was slightly tilted.Also even though it was appropriately packaged in its own box and plastic tray, it was shipped by Newegg in a padded envelope. Now I have received many memory kits from Newegg and all have work flawlessly shipped this way I just think this expensive memory deserved a box. It would just take one person to step on the envelope and it could be damaged. The other con would be the price. Its expensive

Overall Review: It would be nice to see a thin aluminum heat spreader instead of the sticker. Not even sure if this is possible but It would be a nice touch with quality ram in this price range. The description stated it was auto-overclocking. However it had to be manually set to 1866 from 1600 but it was a easy adjustment on this laptop. I have found this to be the way most high end ram is. All in all this is quality ram by a great company.

Pros: Runs at specified speeds, benchmarks well.

Cons: none.

Overall Review: To the consumers who are looking to purchase this memory - make sure your laptop actually supports this memory speed before ordering. Reading way too many comments from laptop enthusiasts who, had they acquired more knowledge about their system, wouldn't have run into this issue. Just because this memory is designed to run with Intel products your laptop uses, doesn't mean your laptop is designed to. Motherboard features 101 folks.