Choosing a good memory

littlesam95

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Apr 25, 2011
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Hey Experts!

Im a complete newbie, but loving fiddling with PC's! :pt1cable: Just a quick question, how do i compare RAM? As in the specs of them. I am looking at the:

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-4GBXM

I mostly will use the pc for movies, photoshop, microfoft office and little gaming. Is this RAM overkill?
 
Solution
The RAM you have above:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231443
is fine.
It is a lower latency (8) than the normal 9, and it manages this at 1.5v (although if you want to get that 1600 speed you will probably need to raise the voltage in BIOS to get it - for which you might reap all of 2% reward), which puts it a step above the run-of-the-mill value RAM, for which you are paying about 10% more. A very good deal (to me anyway :) )

The sticks will almost certainly set themselves at 1333MHz when booted, as they should.

Just to give you an idea of the quality of the RAM you have chosen, here is some very good value RAM that would work if you were looking to save a few bucks. I would recommend this RAM to...

Noworldorder

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Jan 17, 2011
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Your motherboard determines the type of RAM you will buy. It must first have the right number of pins (240 in this case), the right data rate (DDR3 for these) the right voltage (1.5 here). From there you can make choices as to how low of a latency you want to pay for, or even if you need it. Same thing for speed - just because your MB will accept DDR3-2133 will you ever use it?
Care must be used in that many motherboards will use the same pin count but not the same DDR, or they may use the same DDR but not the same voltage, or they may use the same DDR and voltage but can only accept a certain speed (MHz).
Hope this helps.
 

Noworldorder

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Jan 17, 2011
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The RAM you have above:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231443
is fine.
It is a lower latency (8) than the normal 9, and it manages this at 1.5v (although if you want to get that 1600 speed you will probably need to raise the voltage in BIOS to get it - for which you might reap all of 2% reward), which puts it a step above the run-of-the-mill value RAM, for which you are paying about 10% more. A very good deal (to me anyway :) )

The sticks will almost certainly set themselves at 1333MHz when booted, as they should.

Just to give you an idea of the quality of the RAM you have chosen, here is some very good value RAM that would work if you were looking to save a few bucks. I would recommend this RAM to someone on a tight budget:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161279
For what you are doing as you stated above, you would probably never notice the difference between the two - but stick with what you have as it has better resale value if you want to upgrade.
 
Solution
Selecting memory means matching types, matching the selection to what you want to do applications wise and, hopefully, not letting it be the bottleneck in your system. Getting "super RAM" w/ a run of the mill GFX card(s), MoBo/CPU is a waste of money.

App wise, spreadsheets, large databases, CAD, video editing all benefit from fast, low latency RAM. For gaming, the answer is maybe. If your system is bottle necked by the GFX card, as most budget systems are, then faster memory is going to help. OTOH, tests have shown that, at least on some games, switching to faster memory can have a major impact on performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2792/12

22.3 % (SLI) increase in minimum frame rated w/ C6 instead of C8 in Far Cry 2
18% (single card) / 5% (SLI) increase in minimum frame rated w/ C6 instead of C8 in Dawn of war
15% (single card) / 5% (SLI) increase in minimum frame rated w/ C6 instead of C8 in World in Conflict

That move from CAS 8 to CAS 6 will typically cost ya about $50 ... on a $2k build, that's about 2.5% Cost increase so the returns documented above are hard to argue against.
 

Redskins

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Sep 11, 2010
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I agree on what the person said, about when playing some games it does help to have a faster speed on the memory. I built a system last year I play Call To Duty Black OPS the system just blazing fast.. I used the ASUS Rampage III Extreme MB w/ Intel Core i7 950 3.06 GHz Quad Core 6GB Corsair Dominator GT 2000MHz Triple Channel DDR3 Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000 Watt PSU. Crucial RealSSD C-300 128GB SATA 3 6GB/s Boot drive 1.5TB Western Digital Hard drive XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card. I use the Thermaltake 760i Big Water Cooler to cool the CPU. I have a question when you use ASUS software to over clock I set the Bios to run at 3.70 GHz Crazy does this drive up the voltage to the rest of the hardware like the GPU & the memory or can I go in a increase the voltages and adjust the timings to make this system go even faster?? Hey every Motherboard has a list of Vendors in the MB manual for comparable DIMMS. Good Luck with your system
 

Redskins

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I heard The ASUS Maximus IV Mother Board has 10 USB 3.0 Ports & 4 SATA 3 6GB/s Ports on the Motherboard with the Blue tooth port you can over clock from your Ipad or Iphone or VIA the ROG port with the dual male UCB cable hooked to your laptop you can do all you over clocking on the fly with the new Sandy Bridge chipset you could see som e extreme Over Clock Records smashed over the next couple months. Good luck with your build. Just remember sepend to get the best Motherboard you can alwats buy a better CPU * Graphics card or cards down the road when they come down in price. The one i72600K Unlock is the chip I think you should buy if you have the cash it is a 3.40GHz Quad Core I sure they next round of chips to be released fairly soon. I love building computers I hope your is fun for you ... Coach Jones Washington Redskins 1993'-2001'