What to look for when buying RAM?

[Snooble]

Hey all,

One thing I'm pretty clueless on is what I should be looking for when buying RAM?

I understand DDR/DDR2/DDR3 and also the speeds 1066, 1333, 1600 etc. But what about latency? I know from reading that you want LOW latency. But what does it actually do? In laymans terms?

Also, is there anything else (tech wise) that I should be looking at in the specs?

One last question how about when Overclocking ram? As a quick overview, the man idea is to push the speed in mhz up? Or lower latencies? Or both?

Thanks a lot always been unsure on those questions..

 

[Emphacy]

memory latency is the delay it takes for the memory controller to tell the memory module to access a specific memory column.

See here for more detail.

You should look at timings in particular I believe, lower timings means faster memory, such as 3-3-3 as opposed to 5-5-5.
Lower latencies generally overclock better than modules with higher latency.
You should look at single and dual channel, although most memory is dual channel nowadays.

Possibility of SLI memory. You should look at voltages, some memory requires higher voltages than others, which your motherboard may or may not be able to provide.

Generally look at reviews of any particular memory, to see how stable it is under higher frequencies, it's max stable overclock and cooling properties etc.

 

[Andrew G]

Would like to add a question here rather than making a new thread about practically the same thing?

What's the difference between ram with the same latencies and speeds but one labelled as "enthusiasts", "gamer" and "special edition". All have heat sinks of deferring design or just colour (copyrighted no doubt), all have lifetime guarantees but relatively vastly differing prices? And even sometimes all within the same company?