Dear Hexus Community! A Question on DDR2 Pricing

[Clunk]

Mmm in the end I didn't buy the crucial from ebay, instead i've seen this:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/product...roductID=14777

What do you reckon? (those still on at this hour! *Clunk*) Seems a great deal at a total of £65.73 Inc. VAT and delivery .

I'm not a fan of Geil ram.

I know quite a few people that bought the Geil stuff when it was at its cheapest from ocuk/md and a lot of them had a DOA stick, or it died shortly after installation.

Others seem to like them though

[Nemz0r]

Reading around a bit more most people are getting 930MHz or so out of the Geil chips at quite high latencies such as 5-5-8-18 or something like that. Doesn't seem ideal. Really i'm looking for some chips that I can get to 1067ish at 5-5-5-15, without paying the 8500 premium .

How about these OCZ platinum? http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(16746)...R2-PC6400.aspx Only a little more expensive than the Geil , yet still under £70 with shipping .

edit: Checked some reviews for these OCZ sticks, seem they get to around the 900-930MHz mark too. I guess i'll try and get my hands on some of the nice Crucial Ballistix then .

[OV3RCLOCK3R]

It's worth spending £72 on Crucial ballistix as they use the Micron D9GMH chips and should easily clock to 1200mhz

[Nemz0r]

I took the plunge and finally ordered some memory! Thanks to funnelhead and Phil-P for the dabs link. I'm not in a hurry because, as said -- i'll be building the rest of my system in august or around then. So hopefully in a whole month dabs will have gotten them in stock .

Anyways, thanks for all the input guys, really appreciated !

Also, if dabs don't get the memory in stock for a loong time, the positive thing will be -- I'll see what happens to the memory prices! If they go up, I still get the price I ordered at, if they go down I'll reorder at the lower price .

[Clunk]

AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH

When buying RAM, never ever EXPECT your RAM to hit the sppeds you see in reviews, if you do, you will probably be disappointed, especially with brands like Corsair that hand out review samples that have D9 (for example) chips, and when you get yours, it has Promos, or Elpida chips that dont overclock well at all.

Bottom line is - Ignore the speeds that reviewers get (most of the time), and concentrate on what the majority of normal users are getting, because that is most likely what you will get.

The other thing is, if you *need* PC2-8500 (1066Mhz) RAM, then buy PC2-8500 RAM. Buying PC2-5300 RAM, on the assumption that it will hit 1066Mhz, or even 1200Mhz is just foolish, regardless of the type of chips the RAM uses.

Suppose that you bought some of ths PC2-5300 super ram and it wont go past 667Mhz, then what do you do? There's nothing wrong with it, so you cant send it back, and chances are, that you paid around £30 more for the pleasure.

I'm not saying that no PC2-5300 RAM will overclock well, what I'm saying is, that NOT ALL WILL, and it is a gamble...luck of the draw

[funnelhead]

It's worth spending £72 on Crucial ballistix as they use the Micron D9GMH chips and should easily clock to 1200mhz

is that from personal experience?

f

[Nemz0r]

Sorry, I should have said . I don't explicitly need 8500 speeds, but I was looking for some 6400 with a high chance to get there. The Crucial sticks from reading around on user comments seem to usually get there, but if they don't, np. I don't mind paying £5 more for that higher chance, however the 2gb 8500 kits @ £120 or so are a bit out of my price range for memory.

edit: Anyways, when I do get them, and the rest of my system in July or August i'll report back and tell you all what I do get out of them .

[Clunk]

If you are buying in august, theres not much point in speccing it up now, prices will have changed and new stuff will be out by then

[funnelhead]

Well im sitting here in my dressing gown waiting for my 4gb of 8500 ballistix to turn up and i wont be buying the rest of the rig till the price cuts.... but it seems to me that if crucial are putting their DIRECT prices up, then soon all the shops they supply will follow, i.e prices are back on the up.

[funnelhead]

This article on RAM pricing over at digitimes.

DRAM contract price stops falling in 2H June

http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20070622VL200.html

hth

f

[funnelhead]

I don't believe this, but Crucials prices have jus gone up AGAIN

this morning the 2gb kit 8500 was £120, up from £105 a few days ago. This evening it's gone up to £134

[Nemz0r]

Heh I kinda owned myself. Been checking price on dabs each day, today it fell by £4 so I cancelled my order and reordered -- alas shipping isn't free anymore -- so i'm ending up paying 50pence more! *Bonks self on the head*

[Nemz0r]

Soo... the RAM came yesterday, I wouldn't bother posting here with a useless bump to say that, but it was quite amusing. When I first saw the box it raised an eyebrow... think... an A3 sized box about 4" deep. Now, this is for 2 sticks of RAM...

So I opened up the box, and inside, was another box, a standard tiny crucial box (in comparison) , about 6" long, 3" wide and 3" deep.

Sorry I don't have a digicam to take pics, but... imagine this:



Note the size of the box compared to the ram sticks...barely any longer.

Now imagine that in a box with a top and bottom the size of an A3 sheet of paper .

[Clunk]

That was like The Blair Witch Project of RAM reviews

[Phil_P]

Now imagine that in a box with a top and bottom the size of an A3 sheet of paper .

My box from dabs was more A4 sized - I was hoping they'd popped an extra couple sticks in just for good measure, but no such luck

[Thorsson]

So is it going up irretrevably? Because if so maybe I should buy it at Dabs while the price holds...