With that in mind, we also had a bit of trouble getting these modules to run at rated speeds - none of the Intel P35 boards we have could reach 1,800MHz. The closest we could get was on the Asus Blitz Extreme, which gave up at a blazingly fast 1,760MHz. It wasn't until we received the Intel X38 boards with that we could get the most out of them.

Thankfully, Corsair has provided a guide online in order to try to help users setup their systems in the correct way.

Of course, DDR3 motherboard manufacturers are tailoring their boards BIOS to use these kind of DIMMs - modules that use the famous Micron D9 ICs. Asus has confirmed to us that all of it's X38 DDR3 boards are "tweaked" for them, and MSI has confirmed its P35 Diamond and X38 DDR3 boards are as well.

Typically a super-overclock or high 3DMark score still exerts itself as a great marketing tool, even if you can't practically run a PC on Liquid Nitrogen and 3DMark e-peen says nothing about how it plays real games. 1,066MHz and 1,333MHz DIMMs often use much cheaper Elpida or Quimonda chips and we found the Elpida has very little overhead. It's only when you want something faster that Micron D9s are the preferred choice for more capable DDR3.

There has also been some confusion between Z9 and D9 micron chips - the Z9s are engineering sample chips, whereas D9s are mass production. The "187E" (1.875ns, E=lower latency) D9s are actually rated as 1,066MHz CL-7 at 1.5V - however, these are massively overclockable as both Corsair and Super Talent (among others) are able to overclock and warranty them for a 70 percent core speed increase at the same CAS latency for just 0.5V more.
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Warranty
Both Corsair and Super Talent offer lifetime warranties which are obviously as good as they get. However, if you're running all day every day at 2.0+V, then the life expectancy of the modules is going to drop dramatically, so be wary.

If, say, a year or two from now one stick dies then it's very likely a newer version of your memory will be out by then, possibly meaning that you won't get a matched pair again because the memory chip has changed. This could be done for economic reasons within the company or simply because Micron doesn't make those particular D9s anymore.

All of this could mean you've got unbalanced sticks that don't overclock like they used to. So, as fantastic as a lifetime warranty is and we don't want to lose it, bear in mind what it entails in a two (or even four) stick system.
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The Corsair DHX technology works spades better than the standard Super Talent heatspreaders - even without the fan, the DHX heatsinks are 3ºC cooler than the Super Talent is with a fan. You can buy the Triflow fan separately and both are still cheaper than the Corsair are, but they aren't designed to be used together.