Our Verdict
These Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro memory modules not only look great, but they also perform well and are incredibly competitively priced. The only downer is that their tall height might interfere with your CPU cooler.
- Fantastic lighting
- Great software
- Reasonable overclocking headroom
- Aging design
- Lower-latency models can be expensive
- Might interfere with low-rising CPU heatsinks
I’ve used Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro gaming RAM in features and systems more times than I’ve had hot dinners, and for good reasons These gaming memory modules are always very well priced, they look fantastic, and they have other benefits too. I’m testing a 16GB (2 x 8GB) dual-channel 3,600MHz kit here, which costs just $59.99.
That’s an incredible price for this memory, and you can pick up a 32GB kit for just $85 as well. If you’re looking for the best gaming RAM you can buy for a DDR4 system, and you want RGB lighting, you’d be hard pushed to find a better offering than these Corsair modules.
Why you can trust our advice ✔ At PCGamesN, our experts spend hours testing hardware and reviewing games and VPNs. We share honest, unbiased opinions to help you buy the best. Find out how we test.
Specs
| Memory chip | Samsung B-die |
| Effective frequency | 3,600MHz |
| Latency timings | 18-22-22-42 |
| Voltage | 1.35V |
| Height (from base) | 51mm |
| Memory type | DDR4 |
| RGB software compatibility | Corsair iCUE |
This particular Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro kit (with the lovably friendly full name of CMW32GX4M2D3600C18) doesn’t have particularly tight latency timings, which sit at 18-22-22-42 if you enable this kit’s XMP 2 profile. However, other timing options are available, as is a huge range of frequencies.
Features
The Vengeance RGB Pro modules look good too, with their towering heatsinks, and they’re even more visually appealing once they’re illuminated. The lighting is the Vengeance RGB Pro’s party piece, as it’s as vibrant and accurate as any other modules we’ve recently tested, but also benefits from full Corsair iCUE software.
This gives you a huge array of lighting effects and patterns that you often don’t find in motherboard software, including the ability to simply transition between two of your favorite colors.
The diffusing bars across the tops of the modules do a great job of evening out the photons from the LEDs underneath, with less visible gaps between them than we saw with the Kingston Fury Beast kit. Like any modules, they look best when they’re placed together, but that’s a bit wasteful if you don’t need 32GB of RAM and they only come with a minimum of 8GB per module.
To solve the gaps created with 16GB dual-channel kits on boards with four slots, Corsair also offers Light Enhancement kits of dummy modules, which cost a fraction of the price of real modules, but have lighting that’s controlled by its iCUE software to mimic having four modules. It’s an advantage that this memory enjoys over every other DDR4 memory kit we’ve recently tested, including Corsair’s own Dominator Platinum RGB modules.
Performance
In terms of thermals, the large heatsinks on the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro modules didn’t seem to offer much of an advantage over the smaller G.Skill Trident Z Neo kits I recently reviewed, sitting just below 50°C under load. However, that’s still plenty cool enough, even if I expected more cooling power from the tall heatsinks.
With the joint lowest DDR4 frequency I’ve recently tested, and average timings, I wasn’t expecting this kit to break any records in AIDA64 Extreme, and sure enough, the G.Skill Trident Z Royal 3,600MHz kit with 17-18-18-38 timings was ahead here.
However, when it comes to real-world performance, clock speed often matters more than latency, and this was borne out in our real-world GIMP image-editing and Handbrake video encoding tests. Here, the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro is only second to the 4,600MHz Kingston Fury Renegade DDR4 kit I recently tested, and even then the margin was small.
I also managed to overclock these 3,600MHz modules to 3,866MHz by just increasing the memory speed, but couldn’t push it further, making it the join lowest overclocked frequency I’ve recently tested.
However, that’s still enough headroom to push most motherboards to their limits if you want to synchronize your memory with your AMD CPU’s fabric clock. Even without doing that, it saw a small gain in our real world benchmarks, as well as AIDA64 read and write speeds once overclocked, although latency performance in the latter was mostly unchanged.
Price
The Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro price is just $59.99 for a 16GB kit, and $85 for a 32GB kit, which is astounding value. After all, these aren’t just workaday modules with basic black heatsinks, they also have full RGB lighting that’s controllable through iCUE, amd they look great.
The option to purchase extra dummy modules to fill out your extra DIMM slots, without having to pay the extra money for a quad-channel kit, adds to the value too. You can get all four of your DIMM slots lighting up in unison without having to pay for four memory modules.
Verdict
If you have room in your PC for tall memory modules, you want top-tier RGB lighting, aren’t too fussed about overclocking headroomm and have a limited budget, the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro is a great choice, with this 3,600MHz test kit offering particularly good value.
With so many variations of speeds and timings available, it can be a daunting experience picking the right kit, but with this 3,600MHz kit now priced at $59.99, now is a fabulous time to pick up some affordable, high-frequency DDR4 modules, and a 32GB kit is a great upgrade for an aging AMD Socket AM4 or Intel LGA1700 DDR4 system at just $85. They might be long in the tooth now, but Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro modules still strike a great balance between performance, value and good looks.
If you’ve never fitted a RAM upgrade before, check out our full guide on how to build a gaming PC, where we take you through the whole process step by step, including installing your memory.