Picking The Right Memory, Binning, And Customization
After being live for a full 24 hours, the G.Skill “Ask Me Anything” has officially concluded!
Major thanks to the G.Skill representatives who took time out of their schedules to come and answer all the great questions our community had for them.We know this was a bit of work, but we're deeply appreciative of the effort devoted to engaging with the community here at Tom’s Hardware.
For answering questions, we tip our hats to Mark Yu, Kay Lin, and Tim Huang. Also, an epic thanks to Frank Hung for helping securing the time and info required to make this happen.Check out the full forum thread.
Tom’s Hardware Ask Me Anything: G.Skill
Q. Why and when should I pick G.Skill over other companies?
A. I think our customer- and fan-base speaks for themselves, and will1220 answered this question fairly succinctly in this post. Not only are we the highest rated, our memory kit quality is top-notch. Quality here refers to two things: reliability and performance. Our memory kits go through at least 4 rounds of hand testing before being shipped out, so we try to weed out all the bad ones before it even hits the shelves. Occasionally, there will still be RMAs and need for tech support, so we try to make these solutions available to the users. Just visit our website and look under RMA or Contact Us for more ways to contact us directly. If you've been keeping up with the news on RAM overclocks, our RAM products have been beating, holding, and retaking world records in the past few years. This goes to prove our manufacturing, selection, and testing process will give you the best overclocking results and outstanding daily performance.
Q. How do you keep your pricing so consistent through multiple ranges? Like your X series goes from 1600-2400 yet all remains around the same price point.
A. Simply, to maintain our competitive edge on the memory market and to provide to all users the best cost/performance value possible.
Q. How about some DDR3-200cl7 flares?
A. The Flare series has been officially discontinued. So we don't manufacture them anymore, unfortunately.You might try your luck on Ebay or Amazon.
Q. Would it be possible to develop an online ordering system, where you could choose your spec of RAM and then select from a range of colors for the heat spreaders so you can match it with the color scheme of the rest of your system?
A. We are still currently evaluating the feasibility and the possibility of an online ordering system.Thank you for the suggestion. We'll take custom made memory kits into consideration if and when we come to that stage of planning.
Q. When you're designing new chips, do you intentionally give them headroom for overclocking so people will buy them?
A. We don't produce the chips. The chips are from IC manufacturers, but we take those chips and put them through a selection process (called binning) and design the modules. Then this is where the 4 rounds of handling testing comes in, to test for the most stable frequency/timing. And it just so happens that under the most stable conditions, there may be a little headroom for overclocking. Please note that overclocking headroom varies from kit to kit, so only the rated specs are guaranteed.