Any strong feelings on memory brand?

[drdoom]

I've used mushkin blackline on my last 3 builds. Any compelling reason to go with something else? Also, any reason to spend extra on 1866 over 1600? Is timing all that critical?

[James]

Crucial in general.

Kingston for servers if not Crucial.
Kingston/Mushkin for desktops if not Crucial.

Timings on the Intel side aren't super important anymore. On the AMD side they are slightly more important, but still not nearly as vital as they used to be. The difference between CAS9 and CAS11 at 1600MHz is much smaller than it used to be at 400MHz clocks.

[drdoom]

Thanks. I'm probably going to stick with Mushkin, maybe the redline. There must be half a dozen different modules with slightly different timing. It was getting confusion.

[kujoe2002]

I don't know. I find Crucial to be overrated. I have a liking to Gskill. All of my past and current builds have been with them and I still like them the best.

[James]

I don't know. I find Crucial to be overrated. I have a liking to Gskill. All of my past and current builds have been with them and I still like them the best.

I use them for all of my desktop builds, but only because they were stable when Crucial Ballistix was terrible (Back in the DDR days). When I say Crucial, I only mean the generic plain green no heatsink mainstream stuff. I avoid Crucial's "performance" branded stuff like the plague.

In that realm of generic plain green PCB RAM though, I do switch between Crucial, Kingston, and G.Skill pretty interchangeably. At work for desktops, it was whatever was cheapest at the time from those 3 brands, for home I use G.Skill with the heatsinks.

For Servers I only use Crucial and Kingston.

[wh666-666]

Kingston always been fine with me. Most brands are actually produced by the bigger names like Kingstone.

[ImaNihilist]

Crucial because of the warranty program. Twice I've called them with bad a bad DIMM and they just sent a replacement right away.

IMO, "fancy" RAM is stupid. I dabbled in it years ago. It makes no real difference, and the premium isn't near worth it. In almost all cases you are better off with more memory instead of memory with really tight timings.

The only time some kind of performance memory is really needed is if you've tricked out your machine to the absolute maximum it can go and you still want more, or you are doing some kind of unusual math. In almost any other scenario you'd be better off with a slight CPU or GPU bump over memory with tight timings.

[drdoom]

I would agree with you in general. I avoid any kind of so called budget ram though. I had some problems with cheap ram that someone used in a build for me a long time ago. Of course these days you can get 8 gigs of memory for less than 50USD so there is no reason to use any super cheap ram. Is there a reason to use 1866 over 1600?

[ImaNihilist]

OC potential.

[Timman_24]

As James said, Kingston for servers. I've personally used Mushkin for desktops and have never had a bad stick.

[Squirrel Meat]

Honestly, when I switched from DDR2 800 to DDR3 1600 I expected a jump and guess what.....I didnt notice hardly anything....Maybe a bit snappier but that could have also been because of new proc, new mobo plus new ram,,,,as long as your not going bottom of the barrel you will be fine.