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2400 vs 1600 Gskill ram in I7-4790k system

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Kenshin-dono

New Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2014
After building several systems for friends and family last year I decided to finally build one for myself. The new 980gtxs seem decent and the Devils Canyon refresh seems good enough. If i wait for the broadwell-e i'll just never build anything because im sure there will be new gfx cards coming out and i'll want to wait on those.. ect ect

Anyway. Im using an i7-4790K Processor with an ASROCK z97 extreme 6 mb. This build has a specific color scheme and look to it, so its important my RAM be either white or blue. Newegg has a sale right now on some Gskill ram that fits the bill quite nicely. The problem is i dont know much about ram speed and timings. Price isn't an issue, theyre only $10 or so difference between the different models. Im looking at either the 2400 or the 1866, or 1600 it seems heres the models:

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...112714-Index-_-DesktopMemory-_-20231568-S7A5B

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-16GXM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...112714-Index-_-DesktopMemory-_-20231615-S3A2C


G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-2400C11D-16GXM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...112714-Index-_-DesktopMemory-_-20231672-S3A2A


would the DDR 2400 be better than the 1600? or the 1866? I would think it would be but for some reason the timings are SLOWER on the 2400 than the other two. WOuldn't that make it worse? I notice the 2400 has a higher voltage too, so i dont know if i will have issues with stability or anything like that. Can anyone give me some guidance here? I need to pull the trigger in the next day or two. My gut is telling me get the 2400 but i notice several negative reviews of people saying it wasn't stable in their builds, and the slower timings is confusing/has me concerned
 
Ah yes forgot to mention it will be mostly for gaming and watching movies/videos and stuff on it. I can not get 2133, the 2133 is red, i need it to be blue or white
 
so you two recommend the 1866 over 2400? ... why? is it faster? more stable? Like i said, im a bit confused as to why the 2400 has slower timings.. does that mean its SLOWER than the 1866? Im wondering if someone can clarify this for me

and why am i getting 16gb? why not? its definitely better than 8, and will let me get by with running multiple apps/programs at the same time. Im not sure why anyone would use just 8gb in a build these days unless theyre trying to do it on a budget
 
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16GB will be faster and is more future proof if you are going to use couple of programs at the same time or some ( right now not many ) games which use more RAM. On the other hand I'm not sure if it's something that you really need only for games. Even when you pass these 8GB then performance won't be so much worse.

If you can find 2400 memory in the price of 1866 then go for it. 2400 will be faster but again you won't see big difference in games.
Higher clock = higher bandwidth but with higher clock come higher timings so lower access time. What is better depends from used memory controller and at least in Haswells higher clock is more important than timings ( of course there is some limit when it won't be better ).
 
As I said, its mostly gaming and watching videos. 16gb will let me watch my videos wit several other windows open in the backround without a problem. And yes, the prices are basically the same.. so i guess i should just get the 2400? Is stability going to be an issue? As i said the 2400 had several negative reviews of people saying it made their system unstable. But i dont know if they had bad parts, or old MB's or what. Im assuming with the Asrock z97 extreme 6 it should be fine right? Will i be able to just use this XMP thing i keep reading about or should i just go in and manually set the timings?
 
Z97 boards should run stable at least till 2933. There can be issues at high memory clock but I've never heard of problems at 2400 on any haswell ( that's Z87/Z97 boards ).
XMP should work on any ASRock Z97 board. Don't read newegg comments, most people who write that have no idea what are they doing.

Here you have my tests of 16GB 1866 C9 RipjawsX , 8GB 2133 CL10 RipjawsX and 8GB 2400 C11 ARES ( it's the same as RipjawsX but in a different heatsink ). All of them are nearly the same but higher clocked kits have higher chance to work at high clock.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...ill-RipjawsX-2x8GB-DDR3-1866-F3-1866C9D-16GXM

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...ill-RipjawsX-2x4GB-DDR3-2133-F3-2133C10D-8GXM

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...G-Skill-ARES-2x4GB-DDR3-2400-F3-2400C11D-8GAB
 
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As I said, its mostly gaming and watching videos. 16gb will let me watch my videos wit several other windows open in the backround without a problem. And yes, the prices are basically the same.. so i guess i should just get the 2400? Is stability going to be an issue? As i said the 2400 had several negative reviews of people saying it made their system unstable. But i dont know if they had bad parts, or old MB's or what. Im assuming with the Asrock z97 extreme 6 it should be fine right? Will i be able to just use this XMP thing i keep reading about or should i just go in and manually set the timings?
I run 4 monitors off my Fx rig "see signature" with multiple windows open, news services, the actual program I use for work, skype and a few other things and have never exceeded 7 gig of ram. Though if you don't mind spending the money then get the 16 gig. As far as negative reviews, in most cases it is user error, as Woomack said on a Haswell platform you shouldn't have an issue running 2400 Mhz.
 
I run 8 gigs/2400 in my 4790K/ extreme9 rig, it's plug and play.
I have tried 1600, 1866, 2000, 2400 ram in the rig and in game they are all the same to me.
there are other things that i use the rig for that need faster and more ram but most people only need 8.
shoot for price, 1866 looks just in the center.
 
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