Marik_SteeleTo rule in hell...Join Date: 2002-11-20Member: 9466Members
Depends. At first glance, it sounds like an amazing deal. But with RAM, you have to be careful of where it came from. [Realize that all of the below is second-hand knowledge, and may be very inaccurate. Determine for yourself whether it sounds reasonable.]
From what I understand, relatively few companies make the actual chips that go on sticks of RAM (Hayundai comes to mind) and many more put them on the green sticks of silicon we all know and love. The whole process is mass-produced very high quantity -- RAM is used in many electronic products, not just computers.
As a result, these companies don't even need to make sure all of their chips are of the highest quality the manufacturing plants can make. It's more cost effective to crank up the number they make, test the chips to see whether by luck each is particularly above/below average, and sell them in bulk to the companies that actually set them to silicon -- with an appropriate price based on how high quality they are.
Here's the problem: as a consumer, you may never be told whether the sticks you're buying are substandard product. My personal advice is to see the warrantee. If the company slaps a lifetime warrantee on the product, it probably means they know it'll never go bad. You want that.
Still I was looking at getting more RAM, 256Mb for £40 fill the last slot on my motherboard giving me 630 odd Mb of RAM.
I'm gonna look around some more tho to see if I can get it cheaper or else where (dont want my money to goto the Conservative party as a major donner owns PC World).
TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
Depending on where you live, yeah. Fry's has the same sale running at the moment, and they do have warranties on their RAM. Just be sure to DL a RAM tester, and run it on a two-day burn-in cycle to make sure that it will NOT screw up.
Oh.. and Corsair is just an overpriced name, with a junky looking heat spreader slapped on top. Elixir costs about 3/4 as much, and gives just as good performance. Knockoff brands can cost less than half that of Elixir, but you HAVE to test them. Harshly. Sometimes they can throw errors, but most of the rest of the time you're just as good as Corsair, just without the sh***y 'XTreme!!! Memory Speed!!!!!' heat-spreader clipped on. :b Heck, it isn't even a copper spreader. BAH ON CORSAIR!
It is only worth it if you need that much RAM. Of course the obvious answer to most gamers is HELL YEAH, but I mean if there was a chart showing the relationship between RAM and clock cycle, you'd see that you could have as much ram as you want in a sucky computer.. it ain't gonna make it faster. And vice versa, put as much hertz in a computer as you wish, but if you keep the RAM the same, it ain't gonna get much faster. Performance is hertz * RAM relationship where the performance is just an area (the most area when hertz and RAM are kept at the same level).
<!--QuoteBegin--Talesin+Jun 1 2003, 12:55 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Talesin @ Jun 1 2003, 12:55 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Oh.. and Corsair is just an overpriced name, with a junky looking heat spreader slapped on top. Elixir costs about 3/4 as much, and gives just as good performance. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Corsair doesn't cost anything more than other brands over where I live... But then again it's either **** no brands where you need to try out 4 bars before finding one that will actually work (I've tried this) or brands like PQI, Hynix and Dane-elec. I just went with Corsair, and I assure you it's really good. (Not necessarily with the heat spreader mind you) As always, the best heatsinks and fans are never the bundled ones.
They had it at best buy for $40 once...I was thinkin about spending $80 and having around 1300 RAM on my computer <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> Unfortunatly, I didn't <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Oh.. and Corsair is just an overpriced name, with a junky looking heat spreader slapped on top.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Corsair charges top-dollar for their RAM because each stick is <b>tested by hand</b> to ensure the highest possible performance. I read a comment a few weeks ago that Corsair has a typical top-quality reject ratio of 2:5. Many of these 'rejected' sticks are usually sold to lower name brands, or are sold in their ValueSelect series if it passes all but a few tests.
You're paying more for Corsair RAM because it has that nice lifetime warranty, as well as the company assurance that it is the best possible RAM they will sell.
Other name brands which follow a similar procedure are OCZ and Mushkin. Samsung also has a very good reputation for producing quality RAM - it's usually a great deal less expensive than the three companies listed above, and with a minimal performance penalty.
<!--QuoteBegin--83457+Jun 1 2003, 03:55 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (83457 @ Jun 1 2003, 03:55 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I'm after quality 133mhz 512mb ram sticks, where is the cheapest place for them? (links please) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> 133? I think it's time for you to change motherboard and get DDR. Except of course if you can't afford it, but it'll be really nice for your computer performance.
TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
DDR... 133? Um.
I really don't think so. PC-133 is SDR, and the lowest rating for DDR that I even recall is PC2100, though I vaguely remember PC1700. I think.
In any case, Fry's in the USA is selling a 512 stick of PC-133 for $30. I've already got 1.5GB in my machines, so I don't need to buy any more, or I would. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> It's really useful to have it, if for nothing else than loading two CD images into active memory at once... 20,000x CD-ROM when using an emulator. It's also great if you have a machine like a web-proxy which you want to be diskless... let it format a portion of the RAM as a RAMdisk and copy the kernel and all neccessary files there. A literal virtual filesystem. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> And when you do 3D rendering, it's invaluable. Most of the time (when I only had 256MB) I had to render a scene at 8000x6000 in about sixteen segments. Now I can do it in one, even if it's only a little faster. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I'm just waiting 'til I have to go up to 3GB, swapping out all three sticks for full-gig. Though I'm not sure how much space I have left to add detail, I'm sure that I'll eventually reach it.
the best price you can get is 56 with shipping and it will indeed be the cheepest ram evar but yeah get it <a href='http://www.pricewatch.com' target='_blank'>here</a> pricewathc is the best place to purchase cheap stuff for your pc so go there and get your buying on!
Comments
From what I understand, relatively few companies make the actual chips that go on sticks of RAM (Hayundai comes to mind) and many more put them on the green sticks of silicon we all know and love. The whole process is mass-produced very high quantity -- RAM is used in many electronic products, not just computers.
As a result, these companies don't even need to make sure all of their chips are of the highest quality the manufacturing plants can make. It's more cost effective to crank up the number they make, test the chips to see whether by luck each is particularly above/below average, and sell them in bulk to the companies that actually set them to silicon -- with an appropriate price based on how high quality they are.
Here's the problem: as a consumer, you may never be told whether the sticks you're buying are substandard product. My personal advice is to see the warrantee. If the company slaps a lifetime warrantee on the product, it probably means they know it'll never go bad. You want that.
Still I was looking at getting more RAM, 256Mb for £40 fill the last slot on my motherboard giving me 630 odd Mb of RAM.
I'm gonna look around some more tho to see if I can get it cheaper or else where (dont want my money to goto the Conservative party as a major donner owns PC World).
Some people don't know a good deal when they see it.
*Smacks Nigh-Pher again*
*Smacks Nigh-Pher YET again*
Sorry about that last one, I just HAD to.
Oh.. and Corsair is just an overpriced name, with a junky looking heat spreader slapped on top. Elixir costs about 3/4 as much, and gives just as good performance. Knockoff brands can cost less than half that of Elixir, but you HAVE to test them. Harshly. Sometimes they can throw errors, but most of the rest of the time you're just as good as Corsair, just without the sh***y 'XTreme!!! Memory Speed!!!!!' heat-spreader clipped on. :b Heck, it isn't even a copper spreader. BAH ON CORSAIR!
Corsair doesn't cost anything more than other brands over where I live... But then again it's either **** no brands where you need to try out 4 bars before finding one that will actually work (I've tried this) or brands like PQI, Hynix and Dane-elec.
I just went with Corsair, and I assure you it's really good. (Not necessarily with the heat spreader mind you)
As always, the best heatsinks and fans are never the bundled ones.
Unfortunatly, I didn't <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Corsair charges top-dollar for their RAM because each stick is <b>tested by hand</b> to ensure the highest possible performance. I read a comment a few weeks ago that Corsair has a typical top-quality reject ratio of 2:5. Many of these 'rejected' sticks are usually sold to lower name brands, or are sold in their ValueSelect series if it passes all but a few tests.
You're paying more for Corsair RAM because it has that nice lifetime warranty, as well as the company assurance that it is the best possible RAM they will sell.
Other name brands which follow a similar procedure are OCZ and Mushkin. Samsung also has a very good reputation for producing quality RAM - it's usually a great deal less expensive than the three companies listed above, and with a minimal performance penalty.
(links please)
<a href='http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listModule.asp?module=SDRAM%2C+PC133&cat=RAM&package=allModules' target='_blank'>http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listModule...kage=allModules</a>
(links please) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
133? I think it's time for you to change motherboard and get DDR. Except of course if you can't afford it, but it'll be really nice for your computer performance.
I really don't think so. PC-133 is SDR, and the lowest rating for DDR that I even recall is PC2100, though I vaguely remember PC1700. I think.
In any case, Fry's in the USA is selling a 512 stick of PC-133 for $30. I've already got 1.5GB in my machines, so I don't need to buy any more, or I would. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> It's really useful to have it, if for nothing else than loading two CD images into active memory at once... 20,000x CD-ROM when using an emulator. It's also great if you have a machine like a web-proxy which you want to be diskless... let it format a portion of the RAM as a RAMdisk and copy the kernel and all neccessary files there. A literal virtual filesystem. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
And when you do 3D rendering, it's invaluable. Most of the time (when I only had 256MB) I had to render a scene at 8000x6000 in about sixteen segments. Now I can do it in one, even if it's only a little faster. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I'm just waiting 'til I have to go up to 3GB, swapping out all three sticks for full-gig. Though I'm not sure how much space I have left to add detail, I'm sure that I'll eventually reach it.