Does it matter? G.Skill, Geil, Crucial, Kingston, Corsair...

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Lucien

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It's time for me to build a new system, and it's been years since I put this box together. Seems like there are a lot more players in the RAM market than I remember and I have no idea who's good and who isn't.

Any recommendations on which manufacturer I should go with if I want something that just plain works? I'm not going to be overclocking and I'm looking for reliability. And on the flip side, is there anyone I should avoid? Thanks!
 
Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, G.Skill, Patriot, and Corsair are all good as far as I know. I've had to RMA with Patriot and Corsair before, and both were very speedy. They should all just plain work.

If you're getting an Intel system, you should make sure the RAM is rated for 1.5v or less, unless you plan on getting highly overclocked RAM (which you shouldn't if you want something that just works). Go for 1600 mhz RAM.
 
Now that we're talking about memory manufacturers and Tsumi brought it up, how long is Samsung's warranty? Is it lifetime like Corsair, Crucial, G. Skill, Kingston, etc?
 
Samsung says 99 months on the product website, which is 8.25 years.

Scrolling down their support page, they have this to say about RAM warranty:

Lifetime is defined as the lifetime of the Product on the common market as long as a product that has similar function and technology to the Product is available on the common market as a new product. This limited lifetime warranty applies only to the original purchaser of the product as long as the original purchaser owns the product. This warranty is not transferable.
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So basically, as long as Samsung keeps making it/has it in stock, it has warranty. That's what their lifetime warranty means. Not sure about other manufacturers.
 
I'll second the brands Tsumi mentioned and add Mushkin to the list as well. I've never had any issues with their memory products.
 
From my experience with around 1000 modules. RAM from a reputable company after you test it to verify that it is not DOA will have a very low chance of failure for the life of the product although there is a definitely a chance that the ram will be defective when your first purchase it. So please put it through at least 8 hours of memtest86+ (one pass is not enough to detect subtle problems like a single bit flip when the module heats up) or a few hours of hclmemtest.
 
Get modules made from chips with a chip manufacturer's full part number printed on them, meaning when you Google the number you get a 10-30 page data sheet from Samsung, Hynix, Micron, Nanya, Elpida, ProMOS, or PowerChip, and make sure those chips aren't overclocked. If there's any difficulty reading the markings on the chips, such as from a piece of purely decorative metal bling meant to impress the ignorant or stupid, AKA "heat spreaders", assume the chips are either overclocked or were rejected by one of those companies listed above. I've come across only one that met all those criteria that was defective, and that was due to bad soldering. With other modules roughly 10% failed testing (no overclocking or undervolting), including Kingston, Corsair, Mushkin, and OCZ.

Don't assume that 12 hours of testing with any one diagnostic will find all the defects. For example, one person had wierd computer trouble despite overnight runs of MemTest86+ finding nothing, but less than an hour of testing with Gold Memory revealed a bad bit (and it took Gold Memory another 9+ hours to find that bit again).

So if you can't examine the memory in person before purchase, stick with Samsung or no-heatsink Crucial. Don't give up quality for a lifetime warranty because lots of junk is warranted for life, even modules from companies that test only with PCs and allow 2 errors per module.
 
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Get modules made from chips with a chip manufacturer's full part number printed on them
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The funny thing about that is back at some point in Athlon days we had some serious compatibly problems with Micron DDR RAM so for years I steered very clear of Crucial ram or any manufacturer visibly using MT chips... However with Corsair I could have been using Micron ram and not known..
 
Modern day G.Skill's are the lower bunch on the mentioned list of RAM manufacturers, having a higher DOA or fault occurring few months later or randomly, although they are priced cheaper then competing products. The first and second gen RipJaw's were and are extremely poor with a higher failure rate than those mentioned, the worst sort of branded RAM that comes to my mind and experience is EVM ram (Strontium's shit line). G.Skill Ripjaw's are sort of equivalent to the failure rate of the OCZ Agility 1/2, Vertex 1/2 SSD's, the latter bit higher.

G.Skill back in DDR and DDR2 had some of the best RAM on the market and sought after by die hard overclocking enthusiast offering the best latency timings for the xtreme, those day's are over and they are simply avoiding QC theseday's with mass production numbers instead cutting corners.

Best RAM for reliability/least failure rate (based upon my limited experience of about little under 5000 ram sticks):

Kingston's HyperX line (this includes the Blu, T1 and Black series, rated at a higher 1.65v, very reliable)
Corsair Dominators (Old school Micron D9 chips was overclockers heaven till they were cut off production, Vengenance is the cheap perf line, Dominators the best of their line)
Mushkin's (a very good USA based RAM manufacturer offering superb perf/price ratio)
Geil = Crucial (have some nice RAM but not major player's in the RAM sector as they use to be, esp Geil....Athlon 64+ DDR1 day's anyone??

Unknown (haven't used many of these modules for desktops except the first two for laptop SoDimm's)
Hynix
Samsung
OCZ

RAM to avoid:
Strontium
EVM
1st/2nd gen G.Skill Ripjaws. (Current in production Ripjaws X are not bad)
Generics or rebadged ADATA with heatspreaders.
 
If you really mean "manufacturers," then theres really only a few: Micron, Samsung, Hynix. The others are just rebadged with the customer support, warranty, marketing, etc...
 
a friend who works at a big pc store once told me that they switched to Kingston for it's low failure rate
 
Cheetoz said:
If you really mean "manufacturers," then theres really only a few: Micron, Samsung, Hynix. The others are just rebadged with the customer support, warranty, marketing, etc...
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Well you know what I meant (soz it was late, didn't even make sense in some other posts I made), brands" is the corrected term I'm looking for.
 
Been using 2x 4GB laptop sticks of G.Skill DDR3 for around 1-2 years no trouble so far and this is the first time I bought their brand.
 
Samsung's RAM has had great success overclocking. Not to mention low failure rate, little bling (no heatsink things), and a solid warranty.
 
For whatever it's worth, over the summer I had to RMA two sets of G.Skill RAM. They were 1333 MHz DDR3, pairs of 4 GB modules (16 GB total).

They failed one after the other, and the failures were difficult to diagnose, as the RAM passed the usual tests. I got bluescreens, reboots, failure to resume from sleep, and poweroffs. These things happened with no apparent pattern, all without any attempt to overclock. Within days of getting the RMA replacement for the first pair of modules, the second set failed. So I got that RMA'd, too. Between all the swapping of hardware to track down the problem, and the wait for RMAs, most of the summer was gone before I had a complete, stable system.

The replacement RAM has worked fine ever since, but if I were building a new system, I'd probably choose a different brand. As stated above, a lifetime warranty isn't worth the hassle of doing an RMA.
 
Oh yeh almost forgot to add, some of Patroit's lineup of RAM are ok, I've only had 1 RMA instance with their Viper II's.
 
Thanks all. I've actually gone with Corsair for my previous builds, but the last was a few years ago. Was worried that things might have changed since then.

This time round I'm looking at either Kingston:
DDR 3 1600, CAS 10

or Crucial:
DDR 3 1600, CAS 9

Both rated at 1.5V. Would *really* like to avoid having to RMA a faulty stick, there just don't seem like there are enough hours in the day anymore. It seems Crucial would have a slightly more straightforward RMA policy locally if it comes to it.

Is having a CAS that tiny bit faster worth it? Figured wouldn't matter for a non-overclocked, slightly-above-causal gamer box.

And Samsung sounds worth looking at, but don't think I've ever seen it available for sale
 
I wouldn't sweat the CAS latency difference. It's not going to matter for jack squat with respect to your gaming experience.
 
Of looking for 4GB sticks, just go with the Samsung 30nm low voltage stuff.

It is way, way, way underrated by Samsung.

They overclock very easily. They are 1.35v/1.5 modules and can get higher than DDR3-2000 at 1.5v with tighter than stock timings for 1600.

They are super low profile as well, which means they will have no clearance problems at all no matter what cooler you use.
 
Lucien said:
Thanks all. I've actually gone with Corsair for my previous builds, but the last was a few years ago. Was worried that things might have changed since then.

This time round I'm looking at either Kingston:
DDR 3 1600, CAS 10

or Crucial:
DDR 3 1600, CAS 9

Both rated at 1.5V. Would *really* like to avoid having to RMA a faulty stick, there just don't seem like there are enough hours in the day anymore. It seems Crucial would have a slightly more straightforward RMA policy locally if it comes to it.

Is having a CAS that tiny bit faster worth it? Figured wouldn't matter for a non-overclocked, slightly-above-causal gamer box.

And Samsung sounds worth looking at, but don't think I've ever seen it available for sale
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The Samsung stuff is available from Newegg.com.
 
Ive got Crucial Ballistix Elite 1866 sticks. They work amazing, 9-9-9-27 at 2133 @ 1.6v Built in temperature sensors, and lifetime warranty as well. Heat spreaders are a little tall though, with my H100 its not really an issue though.
 
with my 920, i did not like my experience with g.skill ddr3 1600mhz xmp cas8. they wouldn't run (error-free) stable over like 1540mhz. i started out with 6x2gb sticks to work with and kept rotating sticks til i found a set that would run stable near 1600mhz. the 920 memory controller i discovered late didn't really agree with running 6 sticks in triple channel, best option was 4 sticks in dual for quantity. i settled for 3 in triple channel. my sticks had no chance in hell of going over their rated clock, severely limiting my 920's oc without stepping down the ram. starting out with 2 triple channel kits was a mistake in itself, though.

i spent a lot of time on this back then. i'd rather forget the experience. i had a good experience with mushkin, and i think ocz, crucial and kingston are all probably pretty solid.
 
with my 920, i did not like my experience with g.skill ddr3 1600mhz xmp cas8. they wouldn't run (error-free) stable over like 1540mhz.
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Do you realize that the memory controller on the i7 920 supports up to DDR3 1066 and that DDR3 1600 is a substancial overclock that should work but not gauranteed especially if you try to populate all 6 slots?
 
my understanding was that hitting 1600+ was a much more significant problem when populating 6 slots than 3.
 
drescherjm said:
Do you realize that the memory controller on the i7 920 supports up to DDR3 1066 and that DDR3 1600 is a substancial overclock that should work but not gauranteed especially if you try to populate all 6 slots?
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SinShiva said:
my understanding was that hitting 1600+ was a much more significant problem when populating 6 slots than 3.
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3 slots at 1600+ was pretty easy. At least up to around 1800 or so. Then it really depended on your cooling and how good your IMC was and how brave you were about going with higher voltages for the IMC.

For my 6GB kit, my 920 required 1.65v to the IMC to hit 2000. Most people freaked out about going over 1.35v even though Intels updated docs did not state anytyhing like that, and only that you needed the vcore and IMC voltage to be iwthin 0.5v of each other.
 
that's what i thought when i dropped to 3 sticks. no amount of tweaking would get them (again, G.Skill 1600) to exceed 1600, though. and for a perfect, error-free oc i had to keep them around 1540/1560. I think i was just unlucky, but i see perhaps too many people with glowing reviews about their RMA process.
 
How do you know it was not your CPU holding you back from running DDR3 1600? I mean every CPU is different on how much it can overclock.
 
My 920 would go 200+ with a couple of the sticks, but only as high as like 1620 or something error-free. I tested all cpu oc's with smallffts, primarily. I then cycled combination of sticks of ram til I ran blends error-free. I got smallffts running at 210x21 by stepping down the ram multi, but temps prevented me from letting that go more than a few minutes. At 200x19 and 200x20, blend tests would error with the ram at 1600, so I dropped to like 192/193, which was the best I could get error free close to 1600. I settled on 191x21 just because it was a clean number.

They were XMP cas8, 2t? 1600 ram, iirc. I tried looser timings, what have you. I'd have rma'd, but I destroyed a sticker on one of the sticks of ram, which were packaged as 2x 3x2gb triple chan kits. Via phone atm, so a bit sloppy atm
 
I was talking about the IMC overclock. Unless you tested other ram that worked at DDR3 1600 with your CPU or multiple other CPUs that this ram failed at hitting DDR3 1600 there is no way to tell if you got an i7 920 with an IMC that does not overclock well or ram that does not work it its advertized speed.
 
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As I said, With a couple of the sticks, I could run at 1620 or so. With most, only ~1540.
 
There are very few actual makers of DRAM anymore, so people talking about brand X and Y are sometimes talking about the exact same RAM, just with different stickers and heatsinks on them.

Samsung, Micron/Elpida, Hynix, and a few others...
 
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