Advice: P5WD2 Premium, P4 3.6 and memory

Hi forum

I'm considering replacing my ABIT IC7-G with an ASUS P5WD2 Premium to get Prescott (with less stress) and higher speed. Also considering RAID5.
To be able to run a 3.6GHz Prescott STABLE at 4GHz, which memory and what memory speed should I go for without burning too big a hole in my pocket?

One more thing: Would I be able to cool the Prescott at 4GHz with my Hyper48?

1) P5WD2 is an awesome board, but has had RAID problems in the past. I *think * they finally ironed all that out with unofficial BIOS releases (or maybe even stock BIOS with those shipping now), but someone else will need to chime in on that as I am not running RAID and definitely not RAID5.

2) 660 is a very solid proc/good OCer. 4.0GHz (~10% OC) on it should probably be done with stock or lower than stock Vc. I don't know about the Hyper48, but anything better than stock HSF will be a good idea. 600s run cooler than 500s and a LOT cooler than 800s. With that mild of an OC and the little Vc it will take to get it (probably lower than default), any type of aircooling is probably fine.

3) There's a lot of talk floating around about mem at the moment. It depends how much capacity you need and what you want them to do. Cheaper brands like PQI or Patriot or lower lines of name brands like Kingston or Corsair Value Selects might suffice. Again someone else might need to chime in since I've used only Corsair or Mushkin high lines which are generally speed binned to pick the best chips. Value Select versions can be REAL good, but it's a crap shoot.

Probably the best bang for the buck in a "name brand" is the Mushkin XP6400 (~$220 2x512). They can run timings pretty much as tight as Corsair 5400ULs (2x512 for $315) up to about DDR667, but can reach >DDR1000 on default timings and anywhere in between with varying combos of timings between min and defaults.

I don't know what your idea of breaking the bank is, but you'll have top shelf mobo and proc and it would be a shame to stick some no-name DDR2 in there with it If you really aren't concerned about brand/OCing the mem, just find some DDR2 667 or 675 in the capacity you want with the tightest default timings in a price range you are looking for and then Google reviews for it.

i got my pqi turbo 2 gigs for $201... its drr2 667... its pretty good stuff, and for 2 gigs you cant beat the price.

aslo 4 ghz is easy on this board. im stable running 24/7 @ 300 fsb 3:4 ratio which is 4200 mhz!

even running a 640 (3.2ghz) at 4ghz would result in a fsb of only 250mhz, below pc2-4200, so i wouldn't worry about the ram holding back your overclocking. for an every day rig i think the pqi is the best value (ddr667 4-4-4 with more overclocking headroom) but for all out performance there's the mushkin pc2-6400, corsair 5400ul, and corsair 8000ul. all use the same chips and cost a lot of money (more for 1gb than the pqi 2gb costs.) it doesn't sound like you're going for all out performance so i'd say either pick up the pqi or any other cheap ddr2.

Why run RAID 5? There's little point to using RAID 5 unless you have a real hardware controller to do it. Controllers like that cost at least $200. Why not run two drives in RAID 0 and have a backup drive?

Hmm. PQI 2GB for $190 and 1GB for $90 at the egg. Corsair non-UL 5400 (C4) TwinX Pro 2GB for $210 and 1GB for $140. I guess if I was going to spend ~$200 on 2GB, I'd probably go with Corsair just because it's Corsair for not much more I am not sure why the 1GB TwinX non-Pro Corsair is so much more than PQI 1GB by comparison. Probably trying to unload tons of mem sticks with blinky LEDs If I were spending ~$100 on 1GB mem, I'd try the PQI no question. The XMS2 non-UL stuff just isn't that good to warrant 50% more $$.

sicloan, what's the fastest you've gotten that PQI to run and/or what timings?

ross, check it out http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=410965

NICE THREAD! The PQI stuff still looks like a nice deal. Not a ton of room for more speed on them, but 2x the capacity for $100 less than Corsair or Mushkin is awesome nonetheless.

I am getting some different #s than Sen, but I don't know if he even tried as low as me. Any idea what ratios he was testing at on the top results? I had no problems with 3-2-2-4 (tightest the BIOS will go) settings at DDR675 or less. I can make a compilation of my max speed @ timings this week and add it to that thread. I have my max Vddr capable of 2.5V, but I haven't gone over 2.35V "yet" :eek

Hey @

Thanks for a lot of feedback.

Memory: I'll look at Geil 2.0GB DDR2 PC2 5300 667MHz 3ns (GX22GB5300SDC)
They come in at approx $300 here (Europe) and seems to be able to do the job easily. Any comments on GEIL?

RAID5: Just read that with 4 disk this is very slow at writing, read OK. Will probably go for a RAID0 boot/data solution and a RAID1 for backup.