Help Choosing Ram For New Board

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

this mobo runs dual channel DDR400. In order to take advantage of this feature, should i buy 2x256 sticks and fill the first two slots, or just buy one 512 stick and fill just one slot (mind you, there are 4 slots on this board, hence the 2 channels). i can only afford 512 at this time. which would be the best setup? thanks

[kaiweiler]

2X256 is slighty faster I believe
just because instead of draining a certain amount of memory all from one stick at one time, it is taking smaller amounts from two seperate places yet giving the same amount of memory total, thus putting less stress on it with 2x256 sticks
this is what I heard, and it makes sense to me, someone may say something else though

Kai

[peat moss]

YOU LUCKY BASTERD :D I wish 4 slots tho kool I always thought keep the speed the same your laffing> Buy the 512. That way when your going to 2gb' s and beyond your not trying to sell your two 256 pairs at a loss :)

[adamp2p]

It would really help to know where you live (what country, etc.) and what your budget is.

Your board is very powerful, and that is an understatement. What you should do is get some low latency DDR-400, preferably in a dual-channel configuration.

[ck-uk]

You have to have 2 seperate sticks mate or you wont get dual channel.Thats why your mem banks are divided in two channels.

[Spicker]

dual channel rules!

i hav Asus P4P8X

and i hav 2 sticks of PC2100 256ddr and the thing performs better than PC2700 :unsure: :rolleyes: its crazy dual channel rules!

[bigdawgfoxx]

Geil Daul Channel (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=20-144-512&depa=0)

And this is what I have Mushkin Dual Channel (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-287&depa=0)

I think the Geil would be fine and is 60 bux cheaper...so i would go for that

[abu_has_the_power]

r u ocing? if ur not, u shoudn't have bought that mobo. anyways, get mushkin/corsair/ocz/other stuff if ur ocing. i'd go with corsair. they take more punishment. my friend had my exact same ram, and his vdimm is up at 3.2. he did a vdimm mod to his mobo.

if ur not too underbudget, get corsair or mushkin

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

according to asus, geil and corsair dont support all 4 banks of dual channel, to have 2 pairs of dual channel. i think ill go with trancend 512, that way when i get a few more buck ill get another 512. :)

[bigdawgfoxx]

Originally posted by Mïcrösöül°V³@21 February 2004 - 11:07
according to asus, geil and corsair dont support all 4 banks of dual channel, to have 2 pairs of dual channel. i think ill go with trancend 512, that way when i get a few more buck ill get another 512. :)
hm...never heard of that.

[ck-uk]

It do sound strange mate esp' when its the mobo that enables dual channel not the memory.As long as you have 2 matching sticks your set.. :)

[bigdawgfoxx]

yah if you get the geil you will save 60 bux towards another set of it.....dont listen to it sayin it had to be a certain brand thats not true i dont believe.

[abu_has_the_power]

if ur ocing, make sure u have heatspreaders

[clocker]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 10:13
if ur ocing, make sure u have heatspreaders
How come?

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by clocker+21 February 2004 - 13:19--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 21 February 2004 - 13:19)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 10:13
if ur ocing, make sure u have heatspreaders
How come? [/b][/quote]
look at my sig. running my ram at 2.85 will require a bit of extra cooling, not much, but it&#39;s better if u have heatspreaders

[clocker]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 10:38

look at my sig. running my ram at 2.85 will require a bit of extra cooling, not much, but it&#39;s better if u have heatspreaders
Really?

Abu, can you PROVE that heatspreaders actually do anything?
I have read some pretty convincing articles that state that heatspreaders actually do a better job of containing heat than dispersing it.
It could be that heatspreaders are more decorative than functional...

[lynx]

If you go for a single 512MB stick, you will have the problem of trying to find a matching stick if you later want to go to 1GB dual channel. You may find you will then want to sell that single stick and get a matched pair. So if you are going to have to sell them later anyway, you may as well go for the pair of 256MB sticks.

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

Image Resized
[img]http://www.microsoulv3.com/asus.jpg' width='200' height='120' border='0' alt='click for full size view'> ('http://www.microsoulv3.com/asus.jpg')

this is what asus website says about memory, and the QVL list they refer to dont include geil, and the corsair memory is supported, just not in twin dual channel mode.

[adamp2p]

Originally posted by clocker+21 February 2004 - 10:51--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 21 February 2004 - 10:51)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 10:38

look at my sig. running my ram at 2.85 will require a bit of extra cooling, not much, but it&#39;s better if u have heatspreaders
Really?

Abu, can you PROVE that heatspreaders actually do anything?
I have read some pretty convincing articles that state that heatspreaders actually do a better job of containing heat than dispersing it.
It could be that heatspreaders are more decorative than functional... [/b][/quote]
Let me see here. Can I "prove" that heat spreaders dissipate heat better than absense of heat spreaders? I am not sure. Let me try;

What it really comes down to is whether the plastic-like surface that contains the RAM chips dissipates heat better than the metal that covers them. I am pretty sure that the plastic is a poor dissipater of heat, thus a metal surface in contact with the RAM chips will dissipate heat better than without them (provided the air inside the case is cooler than the RAM chips themselves. And when overclocking, cooler is always better...

[clocker]

Memory cooling has become very popular, most notably on video cards. The effectiveness of memory cooling on both system ram, however, is often fuel for lengthy discussions on many internet hardware forums, including our own message board. Does system memory get hot enough to require cooling? Depends on what you consider is hot. My opinion is that memory modules never build up enough heat, to require any sort of cooling. Even when overclocking, they still stay pretty cool. If extra cooling, puts your mind at ease, then go for it, but you can&#39;t necessarily expect better overclocking results or even any extensions in the life of your overclocked / overvolted memory. Premier manufacturers such as Corsair, Mushkin, and OCZ ship their modules with heatspreaders across the chips. They look very nice and are often solid copper or aluminum. A handful of other companies sell ram cooling kits, and other solutions for modules that come without cooling. Ram sinks are pretty much the same as standard heatsinks for graphics chips and CPUs, except they&#39;re a lot smaller and tailored for RAM chip sizes. Tests show these heatspreaders & kits to do VERY little as far as cooling the memory goes. With no real benefit, placing these cooling kits on memory modules is more for looks than for cooling, and that can be appreciated.
from the tutorial on overclocking and memory at OC.Com...


Again...I understand how intuitively heatspreaders/chipsinks might appear to be useful, but both Abu and Adam seem to assume this as fact.
Deeper reading at the quoted forum will turn up several people who have achieved higher OCs after removing the heatspreaders. The "theory" is that they are actually retaining heat and causing instability.

These guys have only fractionally better "proof" for this theory than yours, Adam, but at least they have tried a before and after comparison.

I&#39;m not completely convinced either way.
I&#39;m simply a little leery when something is stated as a "fact" without supporting evidence...

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

thread hijacked.............this was about RAM, not heat dissipation :lol:

[abu_has_the_power]

i highly appreciate ur input clocker. but i too have had experience with both ram with and without spreaders. my old ram, samsung infineon, got fairly warm. i put my hand on it after i shut down the comp and unplug the power. now, the corsair ram, i do the same thing, and the heat spreaders are not much hotter than my room temp. i noticed very significant difference between the 2. plus, i do have my side fan blowing into the case, and it&#39;s blowing rite into the ram. this is the case for both the corsiar and samsung.

once again, i appreciate your analysis, but i speak from experience

[tesco]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 19:16
i highly appreciate ur input clocker. but i too have had experience with both ram with and without spreaders. my old ram, samsung infineon, got fairly warm. i put my hand on it after i shut down the comp and unplug the power. now, the corsair ram, i do the same thing, and the heat spreaders are not much hotter than my room temp. i noticed very significant difference between the 2. plus, i do have my side fan blowing into the case, and it&#39;s blowing rite into the ram. this is the case for both the corsiar and samsung.

once again, i appreciate your analysis, but i speak from experience
lol you call touching the ram and feeling if it is hot experience :lol: not that i dont beleive you its just funny is all, its possible that the reason it is cooler is becuase the heat is being trapped inside the heat spreader so you arent feeling it.

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by ROSSCO_2004+21 February 2004 - 19:32--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ROSSCO_2004 @ 21 February 2004 - 19:32)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 19:16
i highly appreciate ur input clocker. but i too have had experience with both ram with and without spreaders. my old ram, samsung infineon, got fairly warm. i put my hand on it after i shut down the comp and unplug the power. now, the corsair ram, i do the same thing, and the heat spreaders are not much hotter than my room temp. i noticed very significant difference between the 2. plus, i do have my side fan blowing into the case, and it&#39;s blowing rite into the ram. this is the case for both the corsiar and samsung.

once again, i appreciate your analysis, but i speak from experience
lol you call touching the ram and feeling if it is hot experience :lol: not that i dont beleive you its just funny is all, its possible that the reason it is cooler is becuase the heat is being trapped inside the heat spreader so you arent feeling it. [/b][/quote]
the heat spreaders are metal. they conduct heat. so the heat from the ram will flow to the metal. rite?

[clocker]

Abu, I appreciate the effort, but you are not making a valid comparison.
Take your shiny, new Corsair sticks and spin &#39;em up till they bleed.
Then run some memory benchmark for oh...let&#39;s say 24 hours.

Now pry the heatspreaders off and repeat.
You can skip the rinse and lather part.

Is there a difference?
THAT would constitute convincing proof to me.

Sorry, but the "touch test" don&#39;t quite get it.

[Livy]

as with a previous topic i posted about them there was no proof either way to heat spreaders, however i do believe these will both do a better job than any heatspreaders.

http://www.tweakmonster.com/products/ramsinkpage.htm

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=e...-U01+Ram%20Sink (http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=english&Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=CRC-U01&other_title=+CRC-U01+Ram%20Sink)

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by Livy@21 February 2004 - 21:19
as with a previous topic i posted about them there was no proof either way to heat spreaders, however i do believe these will both do a better job than any heatspreaders.

http://www.tweakmonster.com/products/ramsinkpage.htm

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=e...-U01+Ram%20Sink (http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=english&Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=CRC-U01&other_title=+CRC-U01+Ram%20Sink)
those require some kind of airflow to pass through them.

[Livy]

but in theory they will perform alot better than a heat spreader in excatly the same situation, isnce they have more surface area,

and they dont require airflow.

by the same as what your saying, heatspreaders will need airflow too.

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by Livy@21 February 2004 - 21:28
but in theory they will perform alot better than a heat spreader in excatly the same situation, isnce they have more surface area,

and they dont require airflow.

by the same as what your saying, heatspreaders will need airflow too.
exactly. that&#39;s y i have my side fan blowing onto the ram

[clocker]

Originally posted by Livy@21 February 2004 - 18:28
but in theory they will perform alot better than a heat spreader in excatly the same situation, isnce they have more surface area,

and they dont require airflow.

by the same as what your saying, heatspreaders will need airflow too.
Precisely.
Until these have been proven to work better than nothing at all I will still classify them as "eye candy" and not a "performance must have".

Not that I&#39;m totally opposed to eye candy.
Why I&#39;ve gone so far as to stop and gaze at the CCs at MicroCenter.

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by Livy@21 February 2004 - 21:28
but in theory they will perform alot better than a heat spreader in excatly the same situation, isnce they have more surface area,

and they dont require airflow.

by the same as what your saying, heatspreaders will need airflow too.
exactly. that&#39;s y i have my side fan blowing onto the ram

[Livy]

Originally posted by clocker+22 February 2004 - 02:43--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker &#064; 22 February 2004 - 02:43)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Livy@21 February 2004 - 18:28
but in theory they will perform alot better than a heat spreader in excatly the same situation, isnce they have more surface area,

and they dont require airflow.

by the same as what your saying, heatspreaders will need airflow too.
Precisely.
Until these have been proven to work better than nothing at all I will still classify them as "eye candy" and not a "performance must have".

Not that I&#39;m totally opposed to eye candy.
Why I&#39;ve gone so far as to stop and gaze at the CCs at MicroCenter. [/b][/quote]
im on about the ram sinks. there is no chance of them building up heat, and will dissapatie it alot better than a bare chip.

edit: also form the ramsinks i posted, i wouldnt exaclty class them as eye candy, :D

[clocker]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 18:43

exactly. that&#39;s y i have my side fan blowing onto the ram
This was so important you had to post it twice?

[Livy]

Originally posted by clocker+22 February 2004 - 02:48--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker &#064; 22 February 2004 - 02:48)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-abu_has_the_power@21 February 2004 - 18:43

exactly. that&#39;s y i have my side fan blowing onto the ram
This was so important you had to post it twice? [/b][/quote]
he maybe got distacted by the disco going on in his pc. :lol:

edit: also there is alot of proof to back up the ram sinks, e.g proccesors, gpu&#39;s, chipsets etc.

the tweakmonster ones are for graphics card ram, but would work the same on normal ramif the ram chips are the same size. which im assuming they are

[clocker]

Originally posted by Livy@21 February 2004 - 18:47
there is no chance of them building up heat, and will dissapatie it alot better than a bare chip.

edit: also form the ramsinks i posted, i wouldnt exaclty class them as eye candy, :D
Why is there "no chance" that they will build up heat?
Does RAM generate enough heat to benefit from (presumed) increased dissipation?

HOW DO YOU KNOW?
That&#39;s all I&#39;m asking.
Is it really so much?

In the course of my endless cooling modifications, I have operated on many intuitively correct assumptions, only to discover that they were invalid or irrelevant.
I have become aggressively skeptical in my old age.

Yes, I can see the theory.
Now show me the proof.


Then show me the money.

[Livy]

Originally posted by clocker+22 February 2004 - 03:06--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 22 February 2004 - 03:06)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Livy@21 February 2004 - 18:47
there is no chance of them building up heat, and will dissapatie it alot better than a bare chip.

edit: also form the ramsinks i posted, i wouldnt exaclty class them as eye candy,&nbsp; :D
Why is there "no chance" that they will build up heat?
Does RAM generate enough heat to benefit from (presumed) increased dissipation?

HOW DO YOU KNOW?
That&#39;s all I&#39;m asking.
Is it really so much?

In the course of my endless cooling modifications, I have operated on many intuitively correct assumptions, only to discover that they were invalid or irrelevant.
I have become aggressively skeptical in my old age.

Yes, I can see the theory.
Now show me the proof.


Then show me the money. [/b][/quote]
i will give it a go when i get the cash for ramsinks. ive ordered a heatspreader justf or the hell of it since it was onlt £1 odds and i was buying stuff anyway.

at the moment i can boot at 169ram speed anythign over and it fails to post.

[bigdawgfoxx]

Dude...holy fuck

my good friend beat the shit out of his little sister and mom tonight...not fun

then i got caught in a girls bedroom...but got away&#33; hahahahaa whewww my weekends are fucking tight

[adamp2p]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@22 February 2004 - 00:18
Dude...holy fuck

my good friend beat the shit out of his little sister and mom tonight...not fun

then i got caught in a girls bedroom...but got away&#33; hahahahaa whewww my weekends are fucking tight
:unsure:

About your "friend;" you might want to consider looking elsewhere...I am not sure just how "good" he could be...if he beats up his little sister and mother... :angry:

Maybe (OBVIOUSLY) the kid has some serious psychological issues...he needs some therapy...

Hopefully you are using condoms, kid, even the little girls these days have been around...

[bigdawgfoxx]

haha i know they have...i know..he has therapy..he just has anger..he only hit his mom in the arm once and nocked her down but went crazy on his sister

i just made out with the girl and stuff...im a virgin..i dont have sex

[adamp2p]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@22 February 2004 - 00:37
i dont have sex
When you do, just make sure they are clean (get them tested for STD&#39;s), or wear a condom (although that takes all the fun out of it).


errmm...back on topic, before vb123 bitch slaps us... :lol:

[bigdawgfoxx]

haha does wearing a condom make it not feel good? and it dont even stop all stds newayz

[Spicker]

Originally posted by adamp2p@22 February 2004 - 09:43

errmm...back on topic, before vb123 bitch slaps us... :lol:
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off topic loll

if u dont wear condoms foxx u&#39;ll be a dad to 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 kids ;)

where hav u been in health class? girls change room? :lol:

[james_bond_rulez]

roflmao u noobs..... :lol:

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

thread hijackers <_<
can a mod just close this thread

[Virtualbody1234]

As requested.