dpaige11

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2005
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I haven't built a PC in some time so I am a little out of the loop.

I recently purchased a Xeon E5520 and the Asus Z8NA-D6C board. The board had a combo on newegg for DDR3(1333) memory but my processor only supports DDR3(1066). Will I have any problems with this down the line? Is it safe to assume the memory will just run at the lower speed and that is the only negative to expect?

I plan on ordering a secondary E5520 in a few weeks but I'm am still building the box. The price of the DDR3(1066) is the same as DDR3(1333) so I figured its better to go high than low.

If anyone can confirm this I would appreciate it.

Here is what the final build will look like. Its going to be used for VMs mostly.

Antec 300
Dual Intel Xeon E5520
24GB of Registered ECC Memory (12 per CPU)
Asus Z8NA-D6C
Asus EN7800GT (form old PC)
 
Check for recommended memory brands and speed on asus website. A true server board needs ecc memory, but some will run fine on ecc or non-ecc memory. The cpu speed has nothing to do with memory speed; the motherboard chipset and bios determine what memory speed to use; higher speed memory (than recommended) may run slower.
 
Yep, faster memory will work fine in a slower motherboard at the slower speed.

I see that motherboard supports ECC memory - that's something you should seriously consider since it's not much more expensive. Memory is the ONLY data-handling component in most systems that has NO ERROR CHECKING, a deplorable state of affairs IMHO.