to get a deal, i plan on getting kingston value ram 1gig ddr pc3200 400mhz. whats the deal with value ram? why is it a "value" what do you lose? do any of you guys think the ram i mentioned will hold up fine? thanks
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Ram Question...
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kingston value ram is very high quality ram for the price. The corsair value ram is a bit more reliable. My ram preference goes like this, based on price range (512mb stick of PC3200, listed from least desirable to most desireable):
Kingston value $46
Corsair Value Select $45
Crucial $48
Mushkin hi perf $102.67
Kingston hyperx $123.00
Corsair XMS $147.50
I have corsair value ram in my gigaPC and corsair twinx in my control PC at the moment. I've used kingston value in the PCs I built for my mothers rig, and mushkin for past gaming PCs. Crucial is an industry standard for business computers, highly reliable with a good warranty.
the biggest thing suffered in value ram vs extreme ram is speed. Realistically you don't need the extra millisecond in CAS, RAS, etc on a giga PC, and since you're not likely to overclock it's generally best to go with some high quality value ram like kingston, crucial or corsair. You won't see any latency drop in a gigaPC with lower ram timings because the hard drive is still the speed botleneck.
the other thing you suffer is waranty and overall quality, whereas maybe 5% of the coirsair XMS modules may devolp problems over time, the value line probably has a fail rate closer to 10%. Value lines usually use more reliable, slower chips but to cut costs they reduce the quality control end of the manufacturing. Usually you only get a year warranty or so with value-level ram. Crucial has a limited lifetime warranty on their ram, another reason it's popular in businesses.