Benefit of High Priced RAM

[beltzy]

I've been looking at putting together a new build and had a general question about RAM- what benefit do you get out more expensive RAm offerings like Corsair Dominator or Kingston HyperX RAM? Other than aesthetically pleasing product design and what appears to be better heat spreaders, is there a significant difference between these types of high dollar RAM and standard Corsair memory of the same speed (DDR3-1600 for example)? I plan to overclock, but not extremely aggressively. Is the extra money a solid investment for overclocking 20-30% (on a Core i7 920/930 build), or would the money be better invested in the GPU config?

 

[o1die]

I think it's wasted, but that's just my opinion. The premium ram has been tested to run faster at specific voltages; sometimes you have to set the voltages manually, and sometimes lower priced ram will run the same, but hasn't been tested to run at the faster timings or speed. You have to select your board carefully. One example is that only certain amd cpus will work at 1066 with all 4 slots filled. You learn something new every day.