Guidance on G.SKILL Ripjaws vs. CORSAIR Vengeance

You want to buy your memory in matched sets ..... not single sticks.

The other factor you need to be considering is height. Those big tall toothy heat sinks ya see gave one cooling purpose and that is to "look cool" .... While they were effective with DDR2, they add no benefit to DDR3 and their height oft has them hitting 3rd party CPU coolers. Since there's no benefit and a potential future problem even if not overclocking now, smart choice is to stick w/ low profile. Unfortunately memory prices have skyrocketed since a factor explosion which cut what has been estimated to be 1/6th to 1/3rd of the works supply.

1866 CAS 9 Mushkin $165 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226382
1866 CAS 10 Corsair $180 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233399

1600 CAS 10 Corsair $150 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233374
1600 CAS 10 Mushkin $155 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226316
1600 CAS 9 Kingston $156 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104316
1600 CAS 9 Gskill $157 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231606
1600 CAS 9 Mushkin (Low Voltage) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226406

At 1866, I like the Mushkins ... lower price enthusiast oriented company, designed, manufactured in USA....never had compatibility issues. Can't say anything bad about Corsair and Kingston. Gskill purchases haven't treated me well.....There's many more 1600 kits available on newegg, peruse the rest of the list.... i sorted by proce and went till had 5. I will note the last one there is 1.35 volts which is attractive in that it means less heat for ya memory controller on the CPU.

Yep, always get a set of the amount you want, that way you'll get sticks that are tested to work together, with your rig and wanting 2x8GB at 1866 might look at the Snipers (very good with AMD rigs)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231627

or the Ripjaws X

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231615

and if you do go with 1600 by chance, stay away from 1600/10, 1600/9 is considered the entry level so look for CL of 9 or better (8 is preferable, the CL10 sets, are the same as buying decent 1333 sticks)

1600 CL10 is still better than 1333, but yeah there's really no reason to drop below 1600 CL9.

Let us know how it goes

corsair or g skill better ram for pc ?

GSkill tends to have stronger sticks across the different models, (more OC headroom)

I would have to interrogate you on that statement. I purchased 4x4Gb of Corsair Vengance (Blue) DDR3-1600. I use a HAF 932 with some good fans and logical placement. I can get the 1600 from 9-9-9-24-1T @1.5v to 1833 @ 9-9-9-24-2T. With air cooling the max was 9-11-9-27-1T @ 2000. I now have the memory water cooled and have hit 2133 @ 1.65v...9-11-9-27-2T. Unfortunately my Gig 990FXA-UD5 MB will only run like that with 2 sticks of memory.installed, 1 per channel.

It's quite hard to judge these days because the logo on the sticks doesn't tell you what is on the inside. Hynix is the "Gold Standard" but what oft happens is some vendors will start with Hynix memory and then switch later on to a cheaper supplier. Every time I have taken the heat spreaders off Mushkin Redline modules, I have found Hynix inside. Early Corsair Vengeance Pro were Hynix but at a certain point (IIRC Version 4.51), they switched to a lower price vendor

Why they switch ? Some reasons I can guess at:

1. Most reviews are done on any product when it 1st comes out; it's common practice with monitors also that manufacturers switch down the road..... is it to get better reviews and then make better profits down the line ?

2. Yields are low in a production line when it's 1st starts up..... so if ya want a decent and reliable supply of enthusiast RAM in the early goings, it might pay to source your modules from the company with higher yields.... later each supplier's production line matures and yields improve, maybe it makes more economic sense to source from a less expensive vendor.

I find it off that reviewers will oft disassemble a GFX card and identify the memory used.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gaming/4.html

The GDDR5 memory chips are made by SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R2C. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

Click to expand...

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_TF_Gaming/4.html

The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G20325FD-FC03. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

Click to expand...

Notice the difference of 1000 Mhz between the two brands ..... now why that is not worth the much easier task of disassembling a RAM stick heat sink kinda baffles me.

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Glad to hear! My statement was a bit broader than an individual set of sticks though, I said "across the different models", I generally use around 80-100 sets of sticks a year between new builds and upgrades, and while I get calls for Corsair, Mushkin, etc the vast bulk of it is GSkill sets, which I tend to not only use, but as often as possible test in other rigs, and overall the GSkill sticks always tend to have plenty of OC headroom, where many others don't

This is a reply:
@Tradesman1
@JackNaylorPE

I Bow to your vast Knowledge in this area.
I thank you both for sharing your knowledge

I have a Matched Set of Corsair Vengance (Red) 2x4Gb DDR-1600 9-9-9-24, that I purchased 6 to 8 months before the Blue set. They are rated for 1600 but do not like to go any faster, and depending on their mood, will BSOD at 1600. I had forgotten about them, as they are at the bottom of my spare parts bin. I placed them there when I got the Blue set 2 years ago.

Can you read the version number ? If it's 4.51 or later, i wouldn't expect much improvement. Or if you take off heat sink (officially may void warranty) you should be able to see who made the chips.

You can sometimes tell if two vendors are using the different OEM suppliers..... for example.... the only ones I knew of using Hynix at 2400 were the Mushkin Redline and the Corsair Dominators. You can get a hint from looking at the advertised timings....not a guarantee but different timings oft means different suppliers. For example, when building my last personal rig, I had settled on 2400 and since they were all bout the same price (well except for the Dominators) I had settled on these two because of the slight timing differences between them and everybody else:

Mushkin Redline 2400 (2 x 8GB) = 10-12-12-28
Corsair Dominator 2400 (2 x 8GB) = 10-12-12-28

I knew the Redlines were Hynix, and just assumed the Dominators were too since that is their premium line and they had the same timings. But now I have noticed, just looking at what newegg has available at the moment, that the Corsair Dominator has dropped the timings down to 10-12-12-31 ....same as the Vengeance Pro and everybody else. Not sure if that means that Mushkin is the only one left using Hynix ..... but something is afoot a that is a new recent set of timings for the Dominators....last time I had them on my buy list for a user they were 10-12-12-28

But real question is how come the Redlines are $190 and the Dominators are $274 ? That's what I mean by the switcheroo thing .... at one time those Dominators had better timings but now they are $85 more and have same timings as everyone else ??? Some manufacturer's have come out or are coming out with CAS 9 at 2400

Old list ..... but this was from like 2005 by order of units sold .... Elpida is one that has moved up a lot sales wise since then and generally generates a sigh from water coolers who take off their GFX card air coolers and curse that they didn't get Hynix or at least Samsung.....GFX car memory overclocking tends to be more popular than System RAM OC'ing as it's a "use the slide bar" / see if it works kinda thing. That's why there's so much more of a fuss on what's on the GFX cards than what's in the system RAM modules.

1) Samsung
2) Hynix
3) Micron
4) Infineon
5) Elpida
6) Nanya
7) Powerchip
8} ProMos
9) Winbond
10) ISSI

BTW, there is a simple formula to see what is faster at different combinations of CAS and speed

CAS x 1000 / DDR speed

So whats faster 1600 CAS 9 or 1866 CAS 10 ?

9 x 1000 / 1600 = 5.625 nanseconds
10 x 1000 / 1866 = 5.359

But 1600 CAS 8 is only 5.00 and CAS 7 is only 4.38

1600 CAS 7 (4.38 ns) runs about $5 less 2400 CAS 10 (4.17ns)

Here is a FYI about the possible reason behind the change in memory used.
This is the likely suspect in the MASSIVE price of memory now

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-23/chip-prices-reach-two-year-high-after-sk-hynix-fire-in-china.html

I'm not gonna look as I'm sure it's about the Hynxix fire back in 2013. Hynix was back up and running full steam in IIRC, late February 2014.

WELL $%^%$#.

I guess then we are:

1. Getting rolled by the Memory Companies, since the Hard Drive Companies got away with it.

2. The excess supply of DDR3 is drying up, to make room for DDR4 next year.

Just some speculation on the high price of RAM. This time last year, you could get 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 memory for less than $45.00

It just bounced back up again .... prices this week are up about 10% over 2 -3 weeks ago.... my guess is in anticipation of all the kids graduating and having wads of cash they wanna spend everything went up for a few weeks.

I dug out the Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 (RED) and it has Version 2.12 listed. The Memory Chips have listed on them the following info:
Corsair
256M8DDJG
ELCO401132
F120V8CR945H

Thank You For Your Time