Five Overclockable 32 GB DDR3 Kits, Reviewed

[Crashman]

Eight gigabytes per DIMM has become de rigueur for high-end builds, even though you get the best data rates and latencies from lower-density modules. We test five 32 GB products to see if it's still possible to squeeze out enthusiast-class performance.

Five Overclockable 32 GB DDR3 Kits, Reviewed : Read more

 

[jasonelmore]

I've had the Gskill Kit for over a year now and i love it. All these other kits are late to the party.

I use mine for RAM DISK, which is a Asus Program that lets me install games to my RAM and have nearly instant loading times. 10,000 Mbps, where as the fastest m.2 PCIe ssd's will only do 1/10th that.

I cant wait for Broadwell because i need 64GB so i can put a full Battlefield 4 install (42GB and going up with each expansion) on it.

Whats great is the asus RAM DISK program can move the installation freely without you having to mess with the registry or installation directory settings.

 

[jasonelmore]

also the Gskill kit is Quad Channel Compatible. i know it's up to the chipset to set channels, but some kits wont work quad channel.

 

[s3anister]

@jasonelmore RAM disks have been around for ages and is not an exclusively ASUS thing. Also if you actually NEED that much space on a RAM disk then you'd be better served by using an LGA2011 platform since you could easily drop 64GB in it.

 

[Amdlova]

i have used g-skill on my last 3 builds and work hard. never get an blue scren. but with corsairs i lost my count. i prefer use kingston value ram to buy corsair memory again

 

[Crashman]

also the Gskill kit is Quad Channel Compatible. i know it's up to the chipset to set channels, but some kits wont work quad channel.

All of these kits are designed for Quad-Channel mode, but the Quad-Channel CPUs we have won't push the high data rates needed for a memory overclocking evaluation.

 

[jasonelmore]

@jasonelmore RAM disks have been around for ages and is not an exclusively ASUS thing. Also if you actually NEED that much space on a RAM disk then you'd be better served by using an LGA2011 platform since you could easily drop 64GB in it.

The connectivity on LGA 2011 is behind quite a bit. I'd rather have faster IPC, and more than 2 native sata 6g. I wish intel would not keep it's enthusiast line a year behind in tech.

 

[mapesdhs]

I've used a lot of GSkill kits, they're very good, but one thing surprises me about
the choice, namely the absence of the GSkill TridentX kit. I find it's more stable
than the Ripjaws series, especially in max-RAM configurations with 32GB on Z68,
or 64GB on X79, etc. I wonder why GSkill chose to supply the RipjawsX... I was
going to say maybe it was just price, but TridentX is cheaper now, at least in the
UK anyway, but even if it cost more I'd still always recommend the TridentX if a
buyer can afford it. Note the TridentX is CL10 vs. the RipjawsX's CL11. Here's my
config with two TridentX 2400 kits, set for the moment at 2133 as that was my
target speed (at the time it was cheaper than buying native 2133 kits, and I've
not had a chance yet to optimise at 2400):

http://valid.canardpc.com/r9ibvb

Ian.

 

[Vlad Rose]

I have been using G.Skill RAM since the early days of the Athlon when no one had heard of the company. It has always been rock solid for me and have had great luck overclocking it over the years.

 

[kyle382]

good gravy those are some hideous looking sticks.

 

[damric]

I can run my G.Skill 2133CL10s at 2500CL10 rock solid on an Athlon 760K so suck it, intel!

 

[shogunofharlom]

I GOT A G SKILL 32GB 1866 KIT FOR $109 TWO YEARS AGO FROM THE EGG! BEST DEAL EVER! It will be a looooong time till I buy new ram.

 

[spookyman]

So what was wrong with Adata?

 

[Crashman]

So what was wrong with Adata?

There's nothing wrong with it, they just shipped two pair rather than a set of four, in a comparison of four-module kits, and the resulting combination didn't leave any room for overclocking. Corsair got an award for overclocking, G.Skill got an award for value, and there wasn't any "in the middle" award.

 

[Sabishii Hito]

Ironic that all these kits use the same ICs (Hynix H5TQ4G83MFR).

 

[anbello262]

I also use Gskill, and I have been able to set my 1600CAS9 sticks to 2133CAS11, and that really showed a HUGE improvement for my APU 😀

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Enjoyed seeing Mushkin Redlines in ya last roundup (THG Elite Award) and disappointed they didn't participate this time around. The 10-12-12-28 timings are the best I have seen outta the package. The Blackline series also has slightly tighter timings at 2800 with 12-14-14-35

Redline 2400 CAS 10 = 8.33 ns
Vengeance 2800 CAS 12 = 8.57 ns

 

[WyomingKnott]

If I read the chart on page 9 correctly, most memory runs higher bandwidths at the stock settings than overclocked. Am I misreading something?

 

[junkeymonkey]

WyomingKnott--

were you once or still doing the jonny guru bit? where do I remember you from?

I like my gskills but with any brand theres good and bad on how you board takes to them some can be finicky..

 

[WyomingKnott]

?? Jonny Guru ?? I was never over there. Sorry.

 

[junkeymonkey]

my mistake then sorry.... just seemed like I seen WyomingKnott on some other tech site.. my bad

 

[WyomingKnott]

Fully possible, it's just a character from a Heinlein novel. I chose the anonymized name back when I was a lurker.

 

[Crashman]

If I read the chart on page 9 correctly, most memory runs higher bandwidths at the stock settings than overclocked. Am I misreading something?

There's a comment or three in the article about that. The motherboard appears configured for best performance at data rates up to DDR3-2400, and for enhanced stability at data rates beyond DDR3-2400. So if you're running this board and don't know how to optimize tertiary timings, you're probably best to use DDR3-2400 or below.

 

[Traciatim]

Hey Look, a RAM speed article where the results of the tests show virtually no perceptible performance changes in actual usage. Fancy that.

It's too bad RAM is so boring these days. It would be nice if the advice for RAM purchases wasn't "Just buy whatever is on sale as long as you have enough RAM for what you are doing, spend the money on your CPU/Video"

 

[WyomingKnott]

That's pretty much the same advice that I give for SSDs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-8.html .