How will this RAM work with my motherboard?

[Treeroy]

I'm upgrading my PC soon but want to buy the RAM now due to having an Amazon promotional voucher that expires in a few days.

I'm thinking between Kingston's HyperX and Corsair's Vengeance sticks (2x 4GB). As far as I can tell, there's no real difference between them, so I'm deciding at the moment that although the Vengeance is £10 more, I much prefer its look due to the black PCB.

However, I also understand they run on different voltages; does this mean I will have to change stuff in the BIOS in order to get it working?

My current motherboard is an Asus F1A55-m LE (A4-3400) and I'm getting a Z87 board (i5-4670), probably a Z87-A or something.

Will they both work straight out of the box for both these boards? Do I need to change settings?

Thanks.

 

[SethS]

as long as it's a ddr3, if anything lower it wont. The motherboard will tell you the speeds it supports of ram. Buy a 1600 mhz prob.

 

[Tradesman1]

Have no idea that they are other than brand if 1600 or above on Intel you simply enable XMP and should be good to go - though if they are 1600 or 1866 ensure they are 1.5 voltage sticks - don't want those freqs running at 1.65 - on AMD similar - but look for XMP, DOCP or EOCP, enable that and select 1600

 

[SethS]

anything above 1600 mhz is useless, because you will only see a .10 persent increse in performance even at 2400

 

[Treeroy]

Sorry, should have clarified that I'll be buying 1600MHz! My motherboard does support it, I just wanted to know if it will work straight away without fiddling about in the BIOS.

Have no idea that they are other than brand if 1600 or above on Intel you simply enable XMP and should be good to go - though if they are 1600 or 1866 ensure they are 1.5 voltage sticks - don't want those freqs running at 1.65 - on AMD similar - but look for XMP, DOCP or EOCP, enable that and select 1600

It looks like the Corsair memory runs at 1.35V, and the Kingston stuff is 1.65V. So the Corsair is better? If I were to get the Kingston memory, I'd have to downvolt it? (Which I do not particularly want to do)

 

[dextermat]

Hi look at the latency, the lower the better. (get 7-8 instead of 9 or 10, if possible and at reasonable prices

 

[Treeroy]

Hi look at the latency, the lower the better. (get 7-8 instead of 9 or 10, if possible and at reasonable prices

I haven't seen memory at 7-8.

Also - I don't know why a best answer has been selected, that wasn't me.

 

[Tradesman1]

Intel recommends 1.5 or less for 1600, which is a good thing, over 85% of the DRAM available at 1600 is 1.5 or less, if it needs a higher (1.6-1.65) it can (and often is) indicative of weaker memory ICs being used, there should be no need for that much voltage to run basic, entry level DRAM...and regardless of what SethS said - yes higher freq does make a difference (often a big difference) - especially if you multi-task or use any memory centric apps - this is even more true with AMD APUs and especially with Haswell

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell

so if thinking Haswell, may want to look to 1866 or 2133 anyway

 

[Tradesman1]

Hi look at the latency, the lower the better. (get 7-8 instead of 9 or 10, if possible and at reasonable prices

I haven't seen memory at 7-8.

Also - I don't know why a best answer has been selected, that wasn't me.

__________________________

That was given by Dextermat and he has been notified to not be giving best answers to other peoples threads, many think they know all and tend to abuse the system

 

[dextermat]

Sorry guys, won't happen again