Best Performance Memory For £150-£200???

Hi,

I am building my first custom build next week,

I have pretty much decided on the following components;

CPU; AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
MB; DFI Lanparty UT nF4 SLI-D
Case; Antec P180
HD; Samsung spin point P120s (250GB)
CPU Cooler; Akasa AK913
CD Drive; Toshiba SD RS372

Graphics Cards; To be decided (advice needed)
PSU; To be decided (advice needed)
Memory To be decided (advice needed) :) lol

For that matter advice on any of the components would be good ;)

I have approx £150 - £200 left to buy some memory, ideally closer to the £150 mark (probably will only get me 1GB, 2 x 512mb or something). I am looking to overclock the CPU to about 2.6 Ghz and wondered what the best memory world be for this sort of price range???

The GPU I have about £350 put aside and the PSU about £80 (have looked at some Tagan models that looked pretty well reviewed).

Any advice on the above would be greatly appreciated. If you feel I should spend more on the specified components then please say as I don't want to upgrade the core components for some time (already taking a large hit on the PC I am currently selling, so cant waste too much money again) :) lol

Kind Regards, Nathan.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=118550

Thats close to the £150 mark, good ram too.

You can get 2x1GB sticks for £164

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=217959

Value stuff but should be enough.

Will choosing the cheaper 2 x 1GB Ram have any bearing on how much I will be able to overclock the cpu??? Thanks for the links BTW.

Well corsair are a good make, if you put some heatspreaders on em, IIRC there around £10 each stick, you should get better output.

The timings don't have to be as tight with athlon 64 systems so you should be fine.

Fantastic, thanks alot for the advice Dougal.

If it were your money what would you choose??? The 2 x 512mb modules???

I don't know alot about Ram but have been advised to go with the dual channel stuff (sorry if I sound like a bit of a noob but I guess I am to a degree) :) lol

My money is being spent on the 2x1GB sticks :D

Hmmmm, inetersting...... :) lol

and you reckon that there won't be alot of difference in terms of overclocking ability???

You will overclock better with 2x512MB sticks, but i'd go with the 2x1GB sticks for future proofing.

If you are getting low end stuff, 512x2 will be overclocking to the same level as 1GBx2. Although 512x2 will have slightly better timing.
If you are getting high end stuff, it will completely different. You can get up to DDR700 CL3, or typically DDR550 CL2.5 for 2x512 Kits, but you can only get DDR500 CL3 kits for 2x1GB

The 512x2 are considerably hard to tame at DDR600+ level (requires a lot of tweaking), where 1024x2 would not go very far from DDR500 at all. (Only some very rare kits could go up to DDR570~590 range)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...stix_Kits.html

I have been offered the top Ram (PC4000) for £90 from a mate. Its six months old, would this be a good buy??? Its £140 new.

Cheers,

Nathan

I'd go with the offer (as long as the RAM was in good condition). You can always put the 50quid saved towards the OS or a couple of games.

If it weren't for the offer I'd also go with 2x1gb of value stuff.

Thats great, thankd for the fast response and help guys, much appreciated :)

Since you have a DFI motherbaord getting some less expesive UTT (TwinMOS TMSP, OCZ VX Value, ect) memory and pouring voltage on it might be a good bet, if you can actively cool the memory.

Heatspreaders don't gererally help much. Applied wrong they can hurt.

im getting a corsair value 2 x 1 gb kit for 160 odd quid from scan, will these bottleneck with a a64 3700, and a 7800gt?

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Originally Posted by herman368

im getting a corsair value 2 x 1 gb kit for 160 odd quid from scan, will these bottleneck with a a64 3700, and a 7800gt?

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Nope.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dougal

Nope.

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Unless your overclocking of course!!

As for memory - for overclocking at that price - OCZ Platinum Rev 2 (TCC5) at £140ish ot GSkillz LE 4800 at £200ish would be great. For 2 x 1gb modulesand a decent overclock your looking at Crucial Tracers - £270ish from Crucial :(

Vid card: 7800GTX :D

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Originally Posted by kempez815

Unless your ocverclocking of course!!

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They may limit overclocking, but they certainly wont bottleneck the system.

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Originally Posted by skuzgib

They may limit overclocking, but they certainly wont bottleneck the system.

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Well a bottleneck is a part of the system that keeps it from going faster. Slower/less decent RAM=bottleneck when overclocking: as I said!