N00b RAM OC'ing questions...

Soul Rider · 7 Mar 2006 at 16:38

OK, i have OC'ed systems for years but have never taken RAM seriously. I now have bought my first AMD 64 system and now am taking much more of an interest in the RAM side of things.

I will have a budget of £100 and want some answers to the following questions..

I currently have in my set-up
2x512mb Different brand PC3200 single channel RAM with cas latency of 3.5
1x256mb PC2700 single channel RAM clocked to 400MHz with a cas latency of 3.5

Can someone explain to me RAM timings and what they mean.

My new set-up is 3700+ with Asrock Dual Sata board. I know this board has issues with high voltage RAM, maxes out about 2.7v i believe, so this needs to be taken into consideration.

What RAM would you recommend. I am not going to use the beta versions of BIOS on my board, so the FSB will reach a maximum of 274Mhz. If i could get RAM to hit this on a 1:1 ratio, that would be great, if not my divider would set it to about 220Mhz, so the RAM must be able to cope with this.

What are the benefits of 1t, 2t etc? What is the difference between single channel and dual channel? I know the basic speed side of memory but nothing to do with timings. All help is greatly appreciated.

Soul Rider · 7 Mar 2006 at 18:31

mc_bob said:
Im not to sure myself but have you had a butchers at the sticky here?

MC_Bob

Thanks that was really helpful, read through loads of threads but didn't read the stickies.... :eek:

Any tips on good memory to buy?

Soul Rider · 8 Mar 2006 at 17:59

Definately overclocking the sytem, but i'm happy to use RAM dividers. I'm thinking about a 2GB value set as opposed to 1GB expensive set, because i'm willing to divide. Any thoughts?

Soul Rider · 9 Mar 2006 at 15:30

mc_bob said:
Heres a few I would recommend :

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
Price: £109.95 (£129.19 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS4000PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS3 (MY-094-CS)
Price: £129.95 (£152.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)

G.Skill 2GB DDR ZX PC3200 (2x1GB) CAS2 Dual Channel Kit (F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX) (MY-007-GS)
Price: £129.95 (£152.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)

The GSkill kit seems to be a very good price for what you get, I may have to invest in some

MC_Bob

They look good but I really can't go over my budget of £100 by more then £5-£10.

If i can't find 2GB value RAM for that price i will probably go for 1GB of better quality RAM.