I thought registered memory was more expensive than non...

registered:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161337

non-registered:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226119

Those are the two cheapest 12GB kits at the egg right now. I'm not a server HW expert, but I always thought that stuff was supposed to be prohibitively expensive... can someone please help me understand?

thats no where near a fair comparison though. Mushkin is a much higher cost and quality ram, it has different voltage tolerances and has tighter timings than the wintec and is a lot faster (1600 Vs 1333) That is why the price difference is so large.