Any difference between major brands of RAM

Going to buy a 1GB RAM stick.

Don't know if the price difference between Corsair and Crucial also indicates any real quality difference.

They are about equally rated by past purchasers.
Corsair ValueSelect 1GB
Crucial 1GB OEM

Opinions?? :major

 

Your best option is to match what you already have, assuming you already have some memory . Buying mismatched memory can cause problems. Every time I have purchased memory I have purchased the exact same brand and spec that I already had, and have never had a problem. I'm fairly certain if you searched for "problems with mismatched memory" either here or google, or wherever - you'd find plenty of results. That is my two cents, I'd like for a real pro to chime in on this issue .
Are you just adding memory to an existing machine ?

 

Hi

Agree with FED UP. Also, while Corsair makes awesome power supplies, I don't know much about their RAM. Best RAM brands are Crucial and Kingston.

 

Corsair makes good ram. I'm a fan of G.Skill

Sometimes people say Kingston is cheap ram but I'm unsure. I had a Kingston flash drive die on me in about 6 months.

What ram do you have? Could you pull it out and take a look at the timing on it as well as speed. Timing should be a series of numbers that goes like 5-5-5-15

 

For the record, i have purchased alot of gkill ram for laptops and customer purchases. But for my high end stuff i always end up purchasing corsair, not sure if theres a real legit reason or if i just fanboying it. Hopfuly mimsy pops in, as shes pretty good with memory type stuff.

 

What I have, for 4 years now, is already mismatched and no problems.
Came with 1x512MB. Two slots available. Added a 2nd 512MB.

Results from Speccy 1.07:

Slot #1
512 MBytes DDR
Manufacturer: Hyundai Electronics
week/year: 02/06

Slot #2
512 MBytes DDR
Manufacturer: Infineon (PNY)
week/year: 29/05

Intend to remove 1, place 1GB in slot #1
and 1 of the other two in slot #2.

Don't know which one to keep installed OR how I will store the one removed,
since I don't have the original packaging for the PNY I installed.

I have also read good a few good comments about G. Skill from NewEgg customers.

This isn't the real good stuff from Corsair, it's ValueSelect.
Don't know what the difference is.

I know Mimsy is good with RAM.
A few weeks ago, someone had a question about best RAM and speed for a laptop, and after several other responses, Mimsy nailed it right on!

Just tried to find that thread, but no joy.

 

At the lower end, my opinon is go for cheap, unless you start getting way up there in apps demanding massive amounts of ram and speed, im pretty sure theres not a whole heck of a lot of difference.

 

There are 40-something brands of memory in this world and about five manufacturers. In other words, it's all the same stuff in the end, and the difference between Corsair and Crucial is essentially the name on the label. My suggestion is to buy what comes with the best warranty and support.

In the end, the important thing to remember is that not all RAM is created equal, and that well-known brands have the reputation they have for a reason.... usually due to their life-time warranty and good customer support. As long as you get a company that has those two, you'll be good.

My home PCs have Crucial (the laptops), Corsair (the main gaming desktop), and Kingston (the backup gaming desktop), and all three brands have served me well through the years without once hiccuping or throwing errors. While I have no personal experience with them, I have also heard a lot of good things about G.Skill, OCZ, and Patriot.

 

For the record, I'm running 8 gigs of Corsair XMS2 DHX DDR2 800 Dual channel on this particular machine. I've simply been taught that it is POSSIBLE, with mismatched memory, to have problems. Not that you will for SURE have problems, but there are RAM testing programs out there that you can check your current (or any) memory setup you have for reliability under stress. Since you don't appear to be using dual channel memory, mismatched memory may not be much of an issue at all-in which case I'd fall firmly on Mimsy's side of the fence. Btw, if you are going to buy a 1gig stick, you will need to put it in slot #1, while moving your two 512mb sticks into slots #2 and #3. Biggest memory sticks should go in the first slots.
Example :
Slot 1: 2gig stick
Slot 2: 1gig stick
Slot 3: 512mb
Slot 4: 512mb
No 2gig stick ? move everything up 1 slot.

 

I have been running Patriot in all my builds (mainly because it is readily available) and have never had a customer complaint or a problem with my PCs.

 

I've got 6GB of Corsair Dominators 1600 but I wasted my money on them as they are only running @ 11-11-11-28 instead of 8-8-8-xx and I'm not good enough of an overclocker to take my i7 930 past 3.8GHz and take advantage of that memory. Next machine I build will be with regular Kingston RAM again which will most likely be an X8 when AMD gets it out.

 

No, not dual channel memory.
Only two slots available. See my 2nd post:

Thanks Mimsy. :major The situation you describe is similar to what I have learned about Power Supplys.
Many well know brand name PSU's are not actually built by the people who's name appears on the label.
They specify certain specifications and contract someone else to actually build it.

Both Corsair and Crucial have a similar limited lifetime guarantee and
I have read go things about customer support from both.