RAM for P5NSLI

[bojimmany]

Hey guys, I'm building my first rig and have searched for hours and can't get a straight answer. What RAM should I get for this setup?

Mobo - Asus P5NSLI
GPU - EVGA GeForce 7900GT
CPU - E6400

I hear this board is very picky about its RAM. I want 2 GBs and I plan on doing some moderate overclocking. My budget, however, is only about $150 give or take a bit for the memory. Nonetheless, I seem to be able to find at least one pair in about every range for this amount -- DDR2 - 667 (PC2 5300 and 5400) as well as some cheap DDR2 - 800. I don't want to blow this cash on some sticks that are just going to poo on my board or waste any overclocking efforts.

I really appreciate any help guys.

 

[tsondo]

I have found that this board does not like to run memory at 800 no matter what. The main limitation seems to be the 2.1 dram voltage max, which is not quite enough. Many of the faster 800 ram sticks want a min of 2.2. I am using corsair xms2 6400 manually set to its recommended 5-5-5-12 1T settings. When I push it to 800 at 2.1 volts it seems to run ok, even completing super pi in under 20 seconds, but it will not consistantly play games. I have to drop to 667 to get it 100% stable, but I only seem to lose about 1 second on super pi, so its not so bad. If ASUS comes out with a new BIOS to get it to 2.2v (I use 1.4 vcore, btw and 1200mhz fsb) then I think it will be rock solid.