Who makes good ram?

[RuffRyder88]

I am going to buy pc2700/3200 ram, and am considering these makes.

OCZ
CRUCIAL
KINGSTON

Are these good, I know people will recommend Samsung or Cosair, but they are very expensive.

[CyberFed]

Out of those i would recommend getting Crucial.

[RuffRyder88]

I forgot, I can also get Winbond pc3200 ram. Is this good, some one in another post mentioned that it was, but i am still not sure.

[Placid]

What do you mean by good?
Max mhz?-winbond
Most dependable?-crucial
Best support?-crucial

[beezee]

shux I would have said corsair... but I guess crucial is the best of the options you gave us. If possible I'd get pc3200 winbond version...

[Buzzdog]

Ruff,

Remeber the oldest rule in the book, You get what you pay for. I would pay the xtra cash right now and get some good DDR. The logic being that, in the not so distant future (crossing fingers) you will be able to get a 2nd identical stick (should be cheaper by then) and a new dual DDR MB and you will get a kick in the pants upgrade. Just my .02 cents. Out of your choices, I would say kingston or crucial. I have kingston PC1066 sticks that I have been real happy with. I have a stick of CorsairXMS 3200-C2 512meg that I love. But imagine my disgust seeing the current price of it, I paid $250 for that stick less then 3 months ago when It first came out. You can find it for around $180 now.:(


Buzzdog

[RuffRyder88]

I suppose i want reliability, but i will want to overclock a bit, but too much eg. if i had 1.8a, i might upgrade to 2.0-2.2GHz, nothing extreme.
Also, am i right in assuming that winbond does not actually make its own ram, but that some ram uses chips made by them? If so, which companies?

[Skiing Squirrel]

Don't get OCZ. My PC2700 doesnt run as fast as they say it does.

[mdcomp]

Go with Corsair or Crucial. If you intend to overclock the Corsair is by far the best. Both Crucial and Corsair are good brands and they perform very well.

[Penguin4x4]

Or TwinMOS. :)

[rob3rtz]

go for kingston..
i have kingston and happy with it..

and never buy OCZ.. i heard lot of people dissapointed with OCZ

[RuffRyder88]

Is pc2700 enough for overclocking? What is the default fsb speed for a p4? If i put in pc2700 ram, would it peform the same as pc2100, unless i changed the fsb, or does it change by itself?

[Buzzdog]

If you are not wanting to overclock then PC2100DDR from a reliable comany will do you right. If you do plan on overclocking then I would at least go with PC2700. You will not see any change in the memory performance unless you change the FSB or the memory divider if your board supports it. Also what platform you plan on going with will affect your decision and results. To better answer your question we need to get more info on what you are planning on building. Need to know what type of processor(Intel/AMD), CPU family(PIV,PIII/XP,Duron), CPU stock speed and FSB. Mother board type, brand, model. If you were to say go with an Intel PIV system I would recomend an Abit board. I would either go with a BD7II series or an IT7 series. Both of these boards allow you to lock your PCI/AGP bus so you can push your FSB up. They also allow you to use different memory dividers. This is a hypothetical example. Say your CPU is a 1.8a PIV. It has a stock FSB of 100mhz. If you went with say CorsairXMS or XtremeDDR PC3000 you could easily set the FSB to 150mhz, this would take your CPU to 2.7ghz. You can set your memory divider to 3:4. This would divide your fsb by 3 and multiply by 4 for memory fsb. 150/3=50 , 50x4=200. Then end result would give you a 50% OC with a memory bandwidth of 200 mhz, that would be DDR400. You should see SiSandra mem scores of over 3000 with out a sweat. This should all be capable on air cooling with good air flow in the case. But not is all golden in this scenario. Some issues you should be aware of with the Abit boards. They seem to read high system/cpu temps. Also I would go with an aftermarket HS/fan for the northbridge on these boards. In my experience my northbridge was getting hotter then my cpu. Seeing as how the northbridge chip is directly underneath the CPU it had to be adding a few degrees to that temp also.

Good luck in building your system. Just be patient and do your home work before you spend any $$ and you should end up happy in the end.


Buzzdog

[RuffRyder88]

Thanx for that Buzzdog (and everyone else), it was very helpful. I was planning to go with the Abit BD7II mobo (it's cheap!), and a thermaltake volcano hsf (which ones are good?). I am not sure on the cpu yet, but it will be a p4.
Also, are these facts right?

1) the memory speed relies on the FSB and the memory divider.
2) the cpu speed relies on the fsb and cpu multiplier
3) the bd7ii has features which allow me to o/c without affecting other parts of the system, eg. pci, agp etc.
4) the good overclockers are 1.8a, 2.26b. (what else?)
5) arctic silverII/III is the best compund to use.

Thanx!

[CaptBill]

Corsair then Crucial