Corsair New Factory Tour in Fremont, CA, USA

Testing

The testing procedure has two steps: quick testing and functional testing.

The SPD chip is programmed and the same machine performs a quick test. As we mentioned, SPD (Serial Presence Detect) is a small chip located on the memory module that holds working parameters for the memory module, like timings.

Then the modules are automatically tested by a machine that checks if the memory is fully functional and working under the parameters set by the manufacturer, like timings and speed. Corsair has different kinds of machines for this task; the one that will be used will depend on the memory module type.

Figure 5: SPD programming and DDR memory module testing bench.

Figure 6: SPD programming and DDR2 memory module testing bench.

Figure 7: A closer look at one of the DDR2 testers used by Corsair.

Depending on the memory module type, Corsair can also use an even faster procedure, where the memory modules to be tested are put in a machine that loads and tests them automatically, as you can see in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Memory tester.