glee said:
Well I wouldn't go solely by some customer reviews. RAM by all the major
suppliers (Crucial, Corsair, etc) is all good. Better to use RAM from
the approved list suggested by the board maker Asus.
This is categorically not true.
Some major manufacturers, have had *major* problems with reliability.
To the point they even switched chip supplier, when making the DIMMs
to try to stop it.
And this is why we read customer reviews, to easily gather (data mine)
the knowledge that is available.
If there is an obvious problem, and a lot of unhappy customers, the
customer reviews form a gross filter or "early warning system".
At one time, I would have sworn by Crucial Ballistix. Now, not so much.
They've had their problems over the years. Which is why you check
the customer reviews for "trending". Crucial had so much problems at
one point, they stopped shipping Micron chips on the DIMMs, and
started shipping Samsung. Just to give you some idea.
Some manufacturers, are "rebranders" and don't actually make the
RAM themselves. They don't actually have their own factory, churning
out DIMMs. But what they do have, is a good contracting system, having
the DIMMs made by third parties, tested, and then placing their own
sticker on the RAM. If the contractor violates their trust relationship,
they'll get turfed. Now, knowing that, imagine what the test results
might mean.
Sometimes, a SKU on Newegg, goes from "good" to "bad", on a lot basis.
Some RAM manufacturers have changed chip source (when the "good" chips
ran out), and if you're careful, you can spot the point in time that
the modules became not worth buying. This tends to happen for DIMMs
which extend past the official JEDEC range, and are "binned" or
"made by binning" type products with elevated operating voltages.
So if you were shopping for DDR3-2400, you might look for that
in the customer reviews.
We can't carry this "tea leaf" exercise too far. The idea is to
spot trends or intelligence *if available*. For example, there
was an issue at one time, with Micron D series silicon die, and
a certain family of processor. To the point it might even have
been mentioned on Anandtech. If you want, you can start sweeping the
net (Anandtech forums, Xtremesystems.org forums) for that kind of
knowledge. Using Newegg customer reviews, is an effort on my part,
to make this data mining exercise less onerous. But if you
*really* want to know a lot about RAM and RAM compatibility,
then you'd spend the extra couple hours finding out that way.
There are enthusiasts out there, who own twenty or thirty sets
of RAM, and test them all. And when they spot a trend, or notice
a problem with a new motherboard family, they can provide
interesting input.
This entry is a joke, but this is just to make a point.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131754
"3/16/2012 4:02:48 PM Awesome board!
My ram wasn't on the list of compatible ram and it works fine."
At one level, you select RAM based on specs. Does a motherboard
family support all the RAM on the market ? DDR3 comes in "regular"
or "reduced voltage" RAM. At one time, Intel supported both and
AMD supported one of those. So one of your checks, would be
to see whether the broadest range of RAM is supported.
From the user manual for the motherboard:
"DRAM Voltage[Auto]
Allows you to set the DRAM voltage. The values range 1.20V to 2.20V"
So that tells me the board (depending on CPU type), can support
DDR3L. DDR3 nominal would be 1.5V, but there was some RAM
where the voltage spec is centered at 1.35V. So it looks like
that board is intended to cover both types. (The CPU actually
determines whether the support is there, but tracking this
down now on the AMD site, would be next to impossible.)
You do the best you can, to data mine before buying. It could
still happen, that you get a dud, or mismatch between your
board and the RAM purchase. The purpose of JEDEC standards,
is to try to make this process as painless as possible (broadest
compatibility), which is why you don't absolutely need to use
the Asus memory compatibility chart. But it makes some people
feel better. When I clicked the download link for M5A99X Evo
memory chart (from support.asus.com), this is the URL of the
download. It would appear they just copied the test results,
from another motherboard.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM3+/M5A97_EVO/Memory_QVL.zip
To give another example of a "detected trend", when 2GB
modules first came out, the BIOS simply wasn't set up
on any board to properly handle them. The 1GB modules
might work fine for you, while the 2GB, you could try
all the tuning parameters on the board, and not get
the RAM stable. I have a motherboard here, with that
problem (that machine still has only 1GB modules in it).
As BIOS updates were handed out, this problem
gradually disappeared. And that observation, at the time,
would have influenced a RAM purchase (i.e. you would buy
4x1GB instead of 2x2GB, until they fixed that). If you
*didn't* read the enthusiast tea leaves at the time, you
would have missed that, and ended up with lots of
crashing misery. The Newegg's of the world, didn't stop
selling 2GB modules, while the problem existed. It
was eventually resolved, but in fact, not on my
motherboard :-( The 2GB modules are now in my
current machine, where they work fine.
Paul
