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The Corsair XMS3 DDR3 memory is officially the "Corsair TWIN3X2048-1333C9DHX"

Naturally, "TWIN3X" stands for DDR3 dual channel kit, and 1333C9 means 1333MHz data rate with CAS 9 latency - but what does DHX refer to?

The shot below from the Corsair site tries to explain it...

DHX stands for "Dual Heat Xchange" (the marketing people swallowed an 'e') and basically refers to how heat is drawn away from the memory chips - mostly through the heat spreaders mounted on the outside, but also with some heat being transferred through the soldered ball grid array pads to the PC board, and convection cooling - air moving around the chip. If you want to read more about DHX, here's an application note on Corsair's site.

Ok, the modules look sharp, and they did clamp a couple of small heatsinks to the PCB itself... but what you and I want to know is how it performs!

One of the reasons this article is titled "DDR2 vs. DDR3" is that it is the first time we've reviewed DDR3 motherboards and memory - fortunately by using a DDR2 version of the same board, the DDR2 / DDR3 comparison is as fair as we can make it. We will also be testing DDR3 motherboards and memory modules from this time onwards.