Bad or good RAM

[Bashful 0]

Hi Group,

 

As I'm about to upgrade my hardware with a completely new motherboard, CPU and RAM, the different prices of RAM has made me wonder weather there's a difference between the producers of RAM.

 

Kingston has for me allways seemed like a quality-brand, but is it?? And how about Apacer?? How's theirs DDR-modules?? And what about Samsung?? Is that a producer of RAM that should stick to making TV's!!!

 

Looking forward in some constructive and usefull replies...

 

 

Best regards

 

Kasper.

Copenhagen, Denmark.

[BladeRunner 0]

For SDRAM I will only buy Crucial.

For RDRAM I will only buy Samsung.

 

The above manufacturers have proved themselves to me as making very reliable memory modules (0% fail rate on those two).

They have also shown that their memory is very over-clockable if that's your thing.

[Bashful 0]

Hi Bladerunner,

 

Thanks for your reply. But how's Samsung and Crucial when it comes to DDR-modules?? When I look at the prices here in DK, they are as follows for one 256 MB DDR-module:

 

Apacer : $96

Corsair : $132

Crucial : $135

Hyundai : $99

Kingston : $98

Samsung : $84

 

PQI, Veritech, Simple Technology were also among, but I thought these 6 were enough... ;o)

But as you see the Crucial and Corsair is more than 50% more expensive than Samsung - does that indicate a overprice for Crucial and Corsair, or does that indicates that Samsung is crap... no effence... ;o)

 

 

Best regards

 

Kasper

Copenhagen, Denmark

[Palos 0]

I have 2 DDR modules from Samsung, CAS 2.5 PC2100 at 256 MB each.

No problems yet.

[Brian Frank 0]

What a coincidence; so do I.

[BladeRunner 0]

Well, when it comes to DDR-RAM I've only actually built one PC based around it.

As I'd had so much luck with both Samsung & Crucial for the other types I decided on one of those for DDR, picked Crucial because I could order directly from with free delivery.

 

To be honest, no memory is 'crap' but some seems to be better than others.

The majority of non-branded memory out there is still 'Major on third' (Major manufacturer chips on third party pcb's).

Kingston is always a name I too associate with good quality, however the Kingston RIMM's I purchased couldn't be over-clocked at all.

The Samsung ones are running in my system on a 110mhz FSB rock-solid.

As a rule you get what you pay for.

With memory you tend to find a manufacturer you like and then stick with them.

[smokinkane 0]

As far as DDR goes, I have used two different brands than anybody has talked about.

 

Kingmax PC2100 256mg 2 sticks each

OCZ PC2700 256mg 2 sticks each

 

The Kingmax DDR was very stable, I just wanted to upgrade to PC2700 OCZ for further overclockability with my P4 setup. My only gripe about the OCZ ram is the fact that in my BIOS I had to set all my ram timings to "by spd" which didn't affect performance becuase it choose the best settings anyway.

[RoninCS 0]

Mushkin in all my systems, and not a bad chip in the bunch. They have also proven fairly stable in FSB OC situations, which is what I spend my time doing, as I test multiple platforms with multiple CPUs/RAM configurations.