Can someone explain this to an old thicko?

davedudes

davedudes

davedudes

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I consider myself to be a confident builder but one thing im having problems with is ram, I see all the numbers for example - DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Triple Channel, the thing is im just having a hard time understanding the spec of memory, what do I need to look at to pair a motherboard and ram together. I know im thick, would be great if someone could explain?

Cheers guys.
 
lol same here i usually do what your doing and ask the question as there are that many types out now....but before id just go with the usual suspects like ocz,crucial,kingstone or corsair id never buy the top spec high end usualy stick to middle of the road ...so for the memory you need now i persume its for a i7....i am using corsair with a gigabyte ud5 board with no problems come to think of it lol i am the same not to sure what the 2 speeds mean lol
 
roachyuk said:
lol same here i usually do what your doing and ask the question as there are that many types out now....but before id just go with the usual suspects like ocz,crucial,kingstone or corsair id never buy the top spec high end usualy stick to middle of the road ...so for the memory you need now i persume its for a i7....i am using corsair with a gigabyte ud5 board with no problems come to think of it lol i am the same not to sure what the 2 speeds mean lol
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Ive built a number of systems and never fully understood what ram means, so i said "right, thats it im gonna learn something new" even though a feel a bit of a tool asking, the thing is i just want to know in more detail what it all means.

Glad im not the only one.:):D;)
 
Well when you spec up a system, as you know you need to ensure everything fits together.

So, firstly i decide on what processor i want. Say i want a AMD 965. Its a socket AM3 chip.

Then i go looking for a decient socket AM3 motherboard, lets say i find one, now the motherboard will support a certain memory to take to the rest of the system, it will usually be DDR3 nowdays, ddr2 will not fit in a dd3 system, they are notched slighly different.

So now i know i need ddr3, so i go back to the mobo and see what it can support, lets just say it will support ddr 1800 (overclock) and lower ie 1600,1333,10666 etc and if its dual channel memory (2 sticks) or triple channel (3 sticks) someone can correct me if im wrong but i think the current AM3 socket is dual channel at the moment.

Now you need to decide what Mhz ram you want. I normally go for in the middle/highish but not the top one, so i select the 1600Mhz ram.

DDR3 PC3-16000C7 1600MHz Triple Channel

The 1600Mhz lets you know the Mhz of the ram it can run at.

The C7 is the cas latency of the memory, how much latency before it responds to request for data etc etc. The higher it is IE CL9 is slower then CL6 etc etc.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: You actually can run ddr2 or dd3 with some crazy hybrid board

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/msi_releases_ddr2ddr3_hybrid_motherboards
 
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I usually look in the mobo manual/specs and choose the biggest Mhz and GB's and smallest timing (and price). But i believe better timing is better than faster speed.
 
DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz = DDR3 Memory running at 1333MHz speed on C7 timings, ie: 7-7-7-20 for example :P

Most of the time you need to go to the RAM manufacturer's website and check what the specifications of the particular RAM set are.
 
When it comes to pairing ram, its not so much motherboard + ram, as motherboard+cpu+ram that you have to look at.

For example I7 9xx processors do best with memory in sets of 3 sticks as it has 3 channels (64bit wide per channel). An I7 8xx or AMD processor uses 2 channels, so needs a different number of physical sticks for best performance.

Intel memory controllers dont like too much voltage, so for an i7 system you want ram that is fast with 1.65V max, while AMD's can handle higher voltage ram safely.

Dialing back a bit, Intel Socket 775 boards have the memory controller on them, so the voltage is less of an issue, but also most 775 boards are DDR2 rather than DDR3.

With all builds, if you intend to overclock, then faster memory becomes more important, as when you dial up the clocks, the ram is generally overclocked at the same time.
 
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