What RAM to buy?

[Anubrata Khan]

Hey there guys! need some help here.. I am planning to build the following PC but confused with what ram to buy-
Intel core i5 3450
Gigabyte B75M D3H mobo
Asus GTX 660
1 TB WD HDD and 128GB SSD
Corsair 550W PSU
Now I want 8 gigs of RAM @ 1600Mhz but I am confused with what RAM to buy.I was planning Corsair Vengeance but I want to know will that provide any extra advantage over other value RAMs of 1600Mhz? And how am I supposed to set them up? like should I get 2 4gigs RAM or one single stick of 8gigs? If it's two sticks then how am i supposed to pair them up for best performance?My mobo has 4 slots,two color coded white and two blue...
PS-I will use this PC for video editing and gaming.

 

[ksham]

I was planning Corsair Vengeance but I want to know will that provide any extra advantage over other value RAMs of 1600Mhz?

Not really. I generally get the cheapest set that is low-profile. Low-profile RAM is shorter in height. They don't have any fancy heat spreaders. DDR3 runs cool enough so you don't need heat spreaders on RAM. They're mostly for aesthetics but can get in the way of big heatsinks.

And how am I supposed to set them up? like should I get 2 4gigs RAM or one single stick of 8gigs?

2x4GB for dual channel. Always buy them in a kit of 2x4GB because they will be tested and guaranteed to work together. If you buy 1x4GB and another 1x4GB of the same make and model, you can have issues running them because they are tested to run in single channel and not dual channel. Some RAM are easier to tweak by messing with their timing and voltage so they work together. Better just to buy the kit.

If it's two sticks then how am i supposed to pair them up for best performance?My mobo has 4 slots,two color coded white and two blue...

Make sure you put them into matching slots. If you want blue, put them both in the blue slots. If you want white, put them both in the white slots.

 

[Xproyect]

Check the latency (Cas) the lower the better, other than that, there isn't much difference between the corsair vengeance and other Ram's with the same frequency

 

[Anubrata Khan]

Well that was helpful thanks a lot,so its better to go for dual channel that would give the best performance I guess.. BTW what are those RAMS for? like I have seen many rigs have fancy RAMs like the vengeance,dominator or hyperX so if they dont matter why folks out there use them?

 

[ksham]

Well that was helpful thanks a lot,so its better to go for dual channel that would give the best performance I guess.. BTW what are those RAMS for? like I have seen many rigs have fancy RAMs like the vengeance,dominator or hyperX so if they dont matter why folks out there use them?

Color matching and style. For gaming, RAM does very little outside of being storage. The GPU does most of the work and the GPU has its own memory buffer which is much faster than DDR3 RAM. Your GPU should be running GDDR5.

 

[Tradesman1]

In gaming DRAM is primarily a conduit for data from Disk to CPU to GPU, so faster DRAM, say 1600 to 1866 you might pick up a few FPS due to the wider bandwidth of the faster freqs, and then again a few more from 1866 to 2133, etc. It can be whether the expense is woth the FPS, though often good DRAM at 2133 can be priced near 1600 levels

 

[faalin]

If it's two sticks then how am i supposed to pair them up for best performance?My mobo has 4 slots,two color coded white and two blue...

Make sure you put them into matching slots. If you want blue, put them both in the blue slots. If you want white, put them both in the white slots.

Just to add on to this, read your motherboard manual it will tell you what slots to put your ram into. You can also check the Qualified venders list in the manual to see what ram works with your board.

The most common ram you will find is 9-9-9-24 @ 1600mhz also know as CAS 9, you can find CAS 8 or even 7 but they tend to cost more. Since you wont be overclocking any ram will work for you but I would stick with a well know brand... Mushkin, Corsair, Kingston, Hyper X

 

[Anubrata Khan]

Well that was helpful thanks a lot,so its better to go for dual channel that would give the best performance I guess.. BTW what are those RAMS for? like I have seen many rigs have fancy RAMs like the vengeance,dominator or hyperX so if they dont matter why folks out there use them?

Color matching and style. For gaming, RAM does very little outside of being storage. The GPU does most of the work and the GPU has its own memory buffer which is much faster than DDR3 RAM. Your GPU should be running GDDR5.

okay thanks again but one last question how to understand this CAS latency? they have a bunch of numbers separated by few dashes and people say that the first number is important but still I dont get it.. I mean what are those digits following the first one mean?

 

[Anubrata Khan]

If it's two sticks then how am i supposed to pair them up for best performance?My mobo has 4 slots,two color coded white and two blue...

Make sure you put them into matching slots. If you want blue, put them both in the blue slots. If you want white, put them both in the white slots.

Just to add on to this, read your motherboard manual it will tell you what slots to put your ram into. You can also check the Qualified venders list in the manual to see what ram works with your board.

The most common ram you will find is 9-9-9-24 @ 1600mhz also know as CAS 9, you can find CAS 8 or even 7 but they tend to cost more. Since you wont be overclocking any ram will work for you but I would stick with a well know brand... Mushkin, Corsair, Kingston, Hyper X

So the lesser the better,right? Like 9-9-9 is better than 11.-11-11?

 

[ksham]

okay thanks again but one last question how to understand this CAS latency? they have a bunch of numbers separated by few dashes and people say that the first number is important but still I dont get it.. I mean what are those digits following the first one mean?

It's a bit technical to explain.

First of all, those numbers are the timing.
- The first number is the CAS latency. CAS latency determines the delay it takes for RAM to return data to the requester. This interacts with the clock cycles. So if the first digit is 9 (or CL9), it'll take 9 clock cycles to return the data. To be simple, the lower the CAS latency, the more responsive the RAM is. But also take into consideration that higher clock rate with higher CAS latency may be faster. You can do the simple math there.

- The second number is the delay (in clock cycles) it takes to access the data (in a nutshell). Data in RAM is not stored as a text file where you type linearly. It's stored as an array (or a matrix). To access data, it needs to access the row and then the column. The smaller this number, the faster the read.

- The third number is the cool down period. After opening and accessing the data, it needs to close the memory

- The fourth number is the time the memory has to wait until next access. Goes with #3.

There are technical terms for each one if you want to read up on it, but I tried to explain it in a dummy way, which doesn't work all the time. But that's a broad overview. Hopefully it makes sense.

 

[Anubrata Khan]

okay thanks again but one last question how to understand this CAS latency? they have a bunch of numbers separated by few dashes and people say that the first number is important but still I dont get it.. I mean what are those digits following the first one mean?

It's a bit technical to explain.

First of all, those numbers are the timing.
- The first number is the CAS latency. CAS latency determines the delay it takes for RAM to return data to the requester. This interacts with the clock cycles. So if the first digit is 9 (or CL9), it'll take 9 clock cycles to return the data. To be simple, the lower the CAS latency, the more responsive the RAM is. But also take into consideration that higher clock rate with higher CAS latency may be faster. You can do the simple math there.

- The second number is the delay (in clock cycles) it takes to access the data (in a nutshell). Data in RAM is not stored as a text file where you type linearly. It's stored as an array (or a matrix). To access data, it needs to access the row and then the column. The smaller this number, the faster the read.

- The third number is the cool down period. After opening and accessing the data, it needs to close the memory

- The fourth number is the time the memory has to wait until next access. Goes with #3.

There are technical terms for each one if you want to read up on it, but I tried to explain it in a dummy way, which doesn't work all the time. But that's a broad overview. Hopefully it makes sense.

You r a nerd bro! Absolutely got it! thanks a lot...