Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 EXPO review

Our Verdict

85%

A decent RGB DDR5 memory kit with EXPO support, though it's a tad pricey.

This is the first Vengeance-branded DDR5 gamer memory kit we’ve seen from Corsair, and it’s good to see this popular brand return, and with an aesthetic tweak too. The past couple of years have been a bumpy ride for a lot of memory manufacturers, as they’ve contended with pandemic-related supply issues and Intel’s decision to mix DDR4 support with new DDR5 memory on its 12th-gen and 13th-gen Core platforms.

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.

However, with AMD sticking to a DDR5-only policy for its latest Ryzen 7000-series chips, we’re hoping DDR5 will soon become mainstream, with hopefully lower prices that are more in line with those of DDR4 kits in the future.

Corsair’s latest Vengeance RGB DDR5 memory kits sit in between the bland grey modules of its standard Vengeance kits and the super-fancy modules on its Dominator modules. They’re fast too, with our test kit rated to run at 6000MHz.

At a price of $226 for a dual-channel 32GB kit, it’s one of the cheapest 6000MHz kits around, using popular SK Hynix memory dies and retailing for a similar price to the Kingston Fury Beast RGB we reviewed a couple of issues ago.

This kit, though, as well as sitting in the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs’ frequency sweet spot, also sports AMD EXPO compatibility. This means it’s fine-tuned for maximum performance and compatibility with Socket AM5 motherboards and Ryzen 7000-series CPUs.

If you’ve missed the lowdown on EXPO, it’s essentially AMD’s answer to Intel XMP, allowing it to set its own parameters instead of those geared towards Intel systems. That said, motherboard manufacturers announced a few months ago that LGA1700 motherboards will support EXPO memory profiles, as well as the usual XMP tech, so there’s nothing preventing you from using this kit with a Z790 motherboard, for example.

This specific kit has particularly tight timings too, at 30-36-36-76 compared to 40-40-40-80 for the Kingston Fury Beast RGB, and the modules are also considerably shorter than DDR4 Vengeance RGB Pro DIMMs too, measuring just 45mm tall. Corsair is clearly hoping these kits will find their way into more systems this way and the company would be right in that thinking.

You still get RGB lighting too, with ten individually controlled RGB LEDs sitting underneath a diffusing light bar. We’d argue that the colors are more vivid than in the original Vengeance RGB Pro modules, but they’re maybe not as bright. Still, you get Corsair’s iCUE software to control them, which is the best RGB control software in the business, and it lets you select from solid colors as well as numerous lighting effects.

We didn’t spot any noticeable performance gains over the cheaper G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB kit; despite only offering XMP profile support, this managed marginally higher scores in our RealBench tests, albeit some within the margin of error, but the Corsair kit’s performance was still bang on for a 6000MHz kit.

Also, heading to the EFI revealed two EXPO profiles, with a 6200MHz option in addition to the standard 6000MHz profile. However, while the 6200MHz overclocked option proved perfectly stable, we couldn’t overclock the kit past 6200MHz without errors creeping into our stress test.

Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 pros and cons

Pros

• Very overclockable
• Clean and smart design
• Relatively low profile

Cons

• RGB fans need to look elsewhere
• No XMP 3 compatibility
• Very expensive

Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 specs

The Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 specs list is:

Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 price

Price: Expect to pay $230 US / £200 GBP for 32GB (2 x 16GB), 6000MHz

Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 review conclusion

We were worried for Corsair there for a minute, as its first DDR5 memory kits, as with many other manufacturers, have been slow and very expensive. The likes of Kingston might have beaten it off the start line with faster, more affordable kits, but this kit has a more reasonable price. In this case, EXPO only buys you an extra 200MHz, but Corsair’s iCUE software and wide compatibility, plus its slightly more vibrant lighting than the G.Skill kit, means it gets a recommendation, but only just.