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looking for bang/buck

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BBigJ

Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2001
Location
Bay Area, CA
I'm building a comp for my little brother to take to college. His budget is a little too tight to be comfortable, so I'm looking for some good ram to add in. We will probably go with a cheap tbred/barton and get as much out of it as we can. I think 512 is about right, and I'm thinking 2*256 to take advantage of dual channel. Paying top dollar for premium ram is out of the question, so I'm looking for something solid that will do, say, 400mhz at aggressive timings. Any suggestions? Geil has some decent priced sticks on newegg. Are they any good? The main thing I want to avoid is memory that has been overclocked by the seller (such as OCZ). Also, if you have a chance stop by here to make suggestions on the rest of the system. Thanks.
 
BBigJ said:
so I'm looking for some good ram to add in.... so I'm looking for something solid that will do, say, 400mhz at aggressive timings... The main thing I want to avoid is memory that has been overclocked by the seller (such as OCZ).

hmm.. well try some OCZ ram. They perform their advertised speed/timings and even higher.. My PC3200 rev.2 is rated at 400mhz @ 6-3-3-2 and I run it at 420mhz @ 5-3-2-2, default voltage. That's some really nice overclocked chips they use, in that case. :D


otherwise... i would go with what everyone says is good and cheap at the same time. The words buffalo....... twinmos.... come to mind..
 
The TwinMOS PC-3200 is excellent stuff, it'll run you ~$100 for two 256MB sticks, and they sport the now hard-to-find BH5 chips (it seems that the only other guaranteed source are from Mushkin- and their stuff is quite a bit pricier than the TwinMOS). General concencus is that they can all do at least 200Mhz @ 2-2-2, and mine do 225Mhz @ 2.78v, and many have gotten do DDR500+ speeds if you are willing to do a VDIMM mod. It's cheap, high quality, and a good overclocker to boot. :)
 
The TwinMOS PC-3200 is excellent stuff, it'll run you ~$100 for two 256MB sticks, and they sport the now hard-to-find BH5 chips (it seems that the only other guaranteed source are from Mushkin- and their stuff is quite a bit pricier than the TwinMOS). General concencus is that they can all do at least 200Mhz @ 2-2-2, and mine do 225Mhz @ 2.78v, and many have gotten do DDR500+ speeds if you are willing to do a VDIMM mod. It's cheap, high quality, and a good overclocker to boot. :)
 
Thanks, any suggestions on a supplier for the twinmos? I searched anandtech pricing and pricewatch and came up blank both places.
 
I've always been a big fan of crucial, but the Crucial pc3200 sticks I've seen are only cas3. Crucial is known to have a bit of headroom however, so if somebody can confirm that they will do aggressive timings, then they are probably the best bet.
 
newegg.com and pickup buffalo, when I got mine last week they had BH-5 chips. Can't go wrong with newegg at all.
 
Thanks, matt. Tell me more about the CH-5/BH-5, why is "B" better? Also memoryx has a chip that isn't labeled as either chipset, do you know what this is?
 
All the big guys in the memory industry have been using Bh-5's because they can run 2-2-2-6 at PC3200, and are proven overclockers.

CH-5 uses 2.5-3-3-6 if I remember correctly, which initially turned people off, but I've also heard good things about that chipset as well.

-Yeah if newegg has Buffalo with BH-5's get 'em, or they'll be gone tomorrow.

Twinmos does have their own memory chips, but I haven't heard much about them.

Just looking at Newegg, it looks like the PC3200 are using CH-5 chips, and the PC3700 are using BH-5 chips. $60 for 256MB is a good price. I'd hop on that if i was you.
 
I don't see anything on newegg about which chips are being used. It only says "Winbond" chips. Also, the buffalo 3700 chips are rated at cas3, so I'm a little hesitant about them. Thanks again for all the help.
 
Meh.. Don't pay any attention to the CAS 3 rating.

Did you look at the pic newegg provides? If you squint really hard, you'll see the chips that are being used are BH-5.
Also, read some of the reviews and you'll notice several people running these at DDR420 with 2-2-2-6 timings with a little more voltage.
If you want BH-5's, you won't find a better deal than this.
Mushkin has PC3200 with BH-5, but they want $200 for 2 x 256MB.
 
One more thing. If you add a third stick of ram to an NF2 board, does it go back to single channel (if I remember correctly the original nf did.)
 
I'm pretty sure it does - although amd platforms barely utilize dual-channel. this is why you see PIV C's with 800fsb breaking 6000MB/s in Sandra (overclocked of course :)), while breaking 3000MB/s with an AMD setup is very hard to do.
 
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