Corsair Blog

In a bit of a slow week we have a couple reviews and a video for you to enjoy this week.

Hexus, Gaming Audio Series™ SP2500 Speakers review — " In all, though. the SP2500s are the best PC-centric speakers we've heard. The asking price may well be a stumbling block for most readers, and many will look toward a budget set of KEF or Mission speakers and amplifier for the same outlay, but after spending hours with a set, there's little doubting that Corsair has hit the right note with its first foray into premium speaker territory. Got a high-end PC build planned? Do yourself a favour and put these on the list."

Legit Reviews, Gaming Audio Series™ SP2500 Speakers review — "When the Corsair SP2500 2.1 PC speaker system showed up in the test lab we hooked it up and were shocked to hear our music. We were able to hear details in the audio that we weren't able to make out on our old speaker system. The satellite speakers on the SP2500 are amazing and the midrange audio is crystal clear. Most audiophiles talk about sound separation and having bass that overpowers vocals and we finally get what they were talking about. The Logitech Z-5300 system that we were running appears to have had greatly exaggerated bass and as a result we were actually missing out on the clarity of our audio tracks. This is something we never would have known if we didn't try out the SP2500 on the same PC. Just picture us playing the same song over and over and switching speaker systems! ;)  The Corsair SP2500 speakers were able to sound great no matter the volume, either, and that is something our old Logitech Z-5300 speakers were unable to do.  The Logitech Z-5300's would distort and you'd smell them heating up, which is a smell that is very unsettling and I'm sure we've all smelled it before.  At the end of the day we found the Corsair SP2500 2.1 speaker system to be great for games, music and even movies. "

That's all from me this week... have a good weekend!

Straight on to the reviews this week, with a minimum of fuss...

ProClockers, Graphite Series™ 600T mid-tower case review — "This is our first go-round with a Corsair case and I am here to say the quality of the Graphite 600T is top notch. There are just a couple of manufacturers we can say this about and now Corsair joins that list. The 600T is sturdy at every point, corner and joint."

Hareware Secrets, Hydro Series™ H70 CPU cooler review— " The Corsair H70 watercooler did what we expected from it: it overperformed all the air coolers we tested to date."

Tweak Town, Dominator® GT DDR3 2133Mhz memory review— "No longer is the "Dominator" series something that the most "hardcore" overclocker needs to be looking at. Sure, it's great for them, but you don't need to be a BIOS genius to get the most out of this RAM. Corsair give us a kit that offers great performance and runs like a gem at its default spec and Intel have given us a great chipset that opens up the easy use of this high speed memory for the masses."

Overclockers Club, Vengeance™ 12GB DDR3 1600 review — "Now, everyone knows Corsair made a name for themselves with the overclocking prowess of their modules. This set lives up to that legacy and more with a bump of almost 25% from 1600Mhz to 1974MHz. That's 374Mhz with a bump in the TRCD and TRAS and the voltage bumped to 1.65v. Not shabby at all! But wait, you don't overclock? Blasphemy! In that case you can reduce the latencies again to improve performance without increasing clock speeds. This set would drop down to 7-8-7-24 again with just a small bump in voltage to 1.60v."

That's all from me this week... have a good weekend!

If you haven't heard, we were at CES last week where we launched a ton of new products. We announced three new audio products — the top of the line Gaming Audio Series™ SP2500 and SP2200 speakers, and the Gaming Audio Series HS1A analog gaming headset which is the cousin to the HS1 USB. We also announced the Special Edition White Graphite Series™ 600T mid-tower, and Obsidian Series™ 650D mid-tower cases, and also our new SATA 6Gb/s Performance 3 Series™ line of solid-state hard drives. We also played some video games...

As we did a very good job of seeding the SP2500s before the press event at CES, we've got more than enough reviews this week to dedicate this weekly round-up to them. So we're going to do a little different format this week. No intros, straight to the quote!

GameSpot UK — "The SP2500 is a fantastic 2.1 system. The accuracy of satellites is something of a revelation for a consumer-focused product, letting you hear detail that you may have been missing from your audio. Though it can come across as a little clinical, the on-board DSP does a great job of offering a range of usable sounds that allow you to tune the system to your tastes. Music is detailed, accurate, and a pleasure to listen to, movies blow your socks off, and the accurate stereo imaging makes playing games a little easier too."

Hareware Heaven, 10 out of 10 stars — "With the SP2500 Corsair has created a 2.1 system which exceeds the audio quality anything else in the same price range. In fact it produces a quality of audio which is better than many other more expensive products."

Hard OCP — "The Corsair Gaming Audio Series SP2500 High-power 2.1PC Speaker System is exceptional and we have absolutely no reservations about recommending these. Assembly was extremely easy, the speakers look great, and performed well in all of our tests. Corsair makes excellent, innovative products and its SP2500 speakers are another reason why the company deserves your hard earned dollar."

Tech Radar, 5 out of 5 stars — "The SP2500 will set you back £200, but we can say without reservation that, as soon as you get them up and running, you'll feel completely justified. If you want high-end PC audio, here it is."

Maximum PC , we get a 9 and Antec gets a... 6 — "There is absolutely nothing subtle about Corsair’s SP2500 Gaming Audio Speakers: This monstrous 2.1-channel system could start a riot. After just a few minutes listening to Les Claypool shred his stand-up acoustic bass on the Primus classic “Mr. Krinkle,” with the amp cranked way beyond sensible, we felt an overwhelming urge to start breaking furniture. So we turned the volume down and started hacking zombies in Left4Dead 2, instead."

That's all from me this week... have a good weekend!

In these videos, Linus from NCIX shows you how to build the “Ultimate AMD System” using a Corsair Graphite Series™ 600T mid-tower case, a Hydro Series™ H70 CPU cooler, Dominator® GT DDR3 memory, Force Series™ solid-state hard drives, and a Professional Series™ Gold AX850 power supply.

The first video concentrates on the system build:

Our new Corsair® Vengeance™ DDR3 memory was specifically designed with overclockers in mind. Vengeance memory combines value, low voltage, overclockability, and a new heat spreader design. To see just how far the new kits can overclock, I chose two high density 1600MHz, Cas 9 kits to test on dual and triple-channel systems. In order to test their stability, I used a combination of HyperPi 32m and Memtest86 to push the Vengence memory to it’s limits. Since the Vengeance kits are rated at 1.5 volts, I tested the modules for overclockability at 1.65 volts as well. We’ll see if the higher 1.65 voltage will help the memory overclock further.

I spoke with Matt Bidinger of Overclockers.com today and he told me about their 1st Annual Benching Team Party 2010 overclocking event. The inaugural overclocking event will be held in Tyler Texas this weekend from November 19th through November 21st, and yes they plan on it lasting for 48 hours. At least twelve of the leading OC'ers affiliated with Overclockers.com and various OC'ing teams will be in attendance. There will be plenty of motherboards, CPUs, and GPUs to torture. As well as 720 liters of liquid nitrogen, LN2 pots aplenty, and some live webcasts of the action.

Over the past year or two, we have greatly expanded the Corsair product line. One of these new additions is our new Air Series™ line of CPU coolers, which we proudly debuted at CEBIT in March 2010. We are offering two models at this time, the Air Series A70 and Air Series A50.