Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 memory review

Our Verdict

78%

Corsair’s Dominator modules are well made and they look great, but the price is too high for these frequencies.

When it comes to DDR5 gamer memory, Corsair seems to be a little off the pace these days, despite being one of the first memory manufacturers to have DDR5 products available at the start. The Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 modules look superb, but they’re expensive for what’s on offer.

Corsair is now struggling to offer any products to compete with the likes of the Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 RGB. Even its slower 5200MHz kits, such as the one on test here, cost much more than the faster competition, such as the ADATA XPG Lancer RGB and Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RGB.

At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest memory since 2003, and we’ve tested and overclocked hundreds of kits, going right back to the original DDR era. We run both synthetic and application benchmarks to assess performance, and also see how far we can overclock each kit. In addition, we look at any RGB lighting features and assess how good it looks, as well as how well the control software works. For more information, check out our How we test page.

Another problem for the Corsair Dominator Platinum kit is that its latency timings are barely any tighter than the higher-clocked competition, at 38-38-38 compared to 40-40-40. Corsair used Micron memory chips with our 5200MHz test sample, but most faster kits now use SK Hynix dies.

The swagger of Corsair’s Dominator kits has always demanded a premium, though, and thankfully for Corsair, its DDR5 Vengeance kits are a bit more compelling. It’s a shame, then, that the company wasn’t able to provide any samples of its cheaper line-ups of DDR5 memory, so we were forced to stick with its DDR5 Dominator kit for this review.

We can’t deny its aesthetic prowess, though, with the Dominator Platinum modules offering some fantastic build quality and great-looking heatsinks. However, these stretch to a lofty 55mm in height, so you’ll want to make sure your air cooler or other components have the clearance they need.

The lighting is superb too, with Corsair using individual Capellix LEDs, rather than diffusing the light into strips. We prefer the vivid diffuse lighting on the Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RGB, but this is likely to be subjective.

The lighting still looks great, though, with punchy colors, and it has one of the most detailed RGB lighting control suites out there in the form of iCUE too. This works very well indeed, but you can also use some motherboard software to control the lighting, or vice versa, with iCUE being able to control your motherboard’s lighting. However, you’ll need to check with your particular motherboard as to whether this feature is supported, as not all boards can cooperate with iCUE in this way.

Dominator Platinum DDR5 overclocking

We were also not able to push our test kit past 5400MHz with an overclock, which is a shame, as even a couple of hundred megahertz more would have seen it faring better against 6000MHz kits from Kingston and ADATA.

Dominator Platinum DDR5 performance

Sadly, the Corsair languished in a distant last place in the AIDA64 Extreme synthetic tests, only manage a read speed of 81GB/s once overclocked, with all the other DDR5 kits on test hitting at least 88GB/s.

Its latency was higher too, at 79ns compared to the next slowest stock speed result of 68ns. Thankfully, this didn’t translate into shockingly low benchmark scores, with a system score that was only slightly off the pace, with multi-tasking suffering the most compared with faster kits. The memory temperature was the lowest on test too, at just 49°C.

Dominator Platinum DDR5 pros and cons

Pros

• Fantastic lighting
• Effective lighting control software
• Great build quality

Cons

• Poor speeds compared with competition
• Limited motherboard lighting integration
• Expensive

Dominator Platinum DDR5 specs

The Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 specs list is:

Dominator Platinum DDR5 price

Price: Expect to pay $270 / £266.

Dominator Platinum DDR5 review conclusion

While Corsair has more competitive kits in its other ranges, the Dominator range offers particularly poor value right now, which is a shame. We’d only consider the company’s Vengeance-branded DDR5 models at current pricing, and even then the likes of Kingston and ADATA often offer better value. There are plus sides here, though, such as low operating temperatures, iCUE lighting and XMP 3.0 control, plus great-looking RGB lighting.

However, Corsair needs to get faster speeds available at much lower prices across the range, particularly with its Dominator series. At the moment, it’s hideously expensive compared with the competition. Our advice is to get the Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RGB, which offers similarly punchy lighting for $230, compared to $270 for these comparatively slower modules.