Mushkin Redline DDR4-2666 16GB Dual-Channel Kit Review: Solid-Value DIMMs

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Crashman

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Not exactly hailed except in the exuberant headline modification of our fearless leader: "Decent enough" is just that, a fair price under current market conditions.Memory prices spiked a few months ago, so I can say "at least this isn't January".

 

Crashman

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Our review queue is over two months long, how would they know when we were going to publish?
 

kraelic

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Not sure, just seen the article and saw the big green advertisement button for $120. And clicking the link takes you to see $170. Seems to be a lot of pricing discrepancies in the articles. The button is hard coded? No way to have it do an hourly update for current prices?
 

Ashutosh_5

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I have bought it from Amazon. This one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LXN1E9U

For my Dell XPS 8930(Intel Z370 and Intel i7-8700) but it is defaulting to 2133 MHz. Case has been opened with Mushkin but no resolution. Dell support is simply having all sort of excuses not to help me on this front.

I was trying to upgrade the memory(from previous 4 X 8GB) to 4 X 16GB. Previous one was Hynix and Micron and it always worked at 2666 MHz but Mushkin is not working at 2666 MHz but at 2133 MHz. I have no idea how to enable XMP on this mother board. Absolutely no support from Dell.
 

Crashman

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DDR4-2666 as an SPD value is fairly recent, like a year ago. I'm betting this memory was added to Mushkin's product line before that, hence the need for XMP. Your board probably doesn't have any XMP option at all.

I'd like to point out to less-experienced users that most of the memory we review has a top SPD value of 2133 or 2400, and very little has an top SPD of 2666. Users need a board with XMP to use most higher-speed RAM (such as DDR4-3200) at its rated settings. DDR4-2666 is one of those "buyer beware" spots in between where you'd expect that it should be using SPD, but may require XMP instead, as this RAM does.
 

Ashutosh_5

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Is this not a good mother board then? What to do? Return this memory chip? which one to buy for this mother board which will work at the speed of 2666 MHz. I don't want to spend a lot of money for this? 64 GB( 4 X 16GB) costs more than $700 and I am not getting the right speed.



 

Crashman

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Keep using it at DDR4-2133? Mushkin didn't spec it wrong so it's not defective. The PC you own was not likely designed for XMP. We have reviews. Our review shows a CPU-Z table that's accurate enough for the average user to see it's only rated DDR4-2666 when using XMP. Even if Mushkin went all out on a publicity campaign to spread the word about XMP vs JEDEC SPD table settings, sellers wouldn't relay that message. But, we have reviews.
 

Ashutosh_5

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What does SPD means?
What does XMP means?



 

Crashman

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SPD mean "Serial Presence Detect", it's a little IC on the memory that stores a table, that the motherboard reads, to determine the memory frequency and latency. XMP means "Intel Extreme Memory Profiles" (yes, the initials are wrong, Intel does that), which is an additional set of table values for not standard settings.

XMP is an overclocking technology. Most boards that don't support overclocking, don't support XMP.

You shouldn't need to know this just to buy DDR4-2666. After all, DDR4-2666 has been standardized. But it was standardized long after the original DDR4 specs. So for a while, the only way to get DDR4-2666 was by XMP. And now you, the buyer, are in the weird position in this weird place in history where DDR4-2666 is available in both versions, being programmed either way, depending on the product you purchase.

But, we have reviews.

 

Ashutosh_5

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Thanks for your great answer...could you please tell me which memory(DDR4) I should buy for my desktop which doesn't require(XMP) or overclocking and it works fine in my case?



 

Crashman

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That is a REALLY tough question for someone who doesn't shop for this stuff, considering that we haven't tested any other DDR4-2666 in a couple years. But, there are shopping tools at sites like Crucial and Kingston, where you can look up DDR4-2666 that has your system on their compatibility list.

 

Ashutosh_5

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Ashutosh_5

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Finally I reached out to a very nice and knowledgeable person at crucial.com and he pointed me to this product:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/xps-8930/CT11062273

Corsair also has a similar kind of memory but it will end up with the same 2133 on my mother board.
Crucial and Micron are the same...as my original one was micron...to be on the safer side...i will go with the crucial.com...hopefully it should work out as on my mother board there is no way one can do over clocking or enter the W-X-Y-Z clock settings for the RAM.
Special thanks for Crashman for all your help and insights...
 
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