Best SO-DIMM Memory?

[Julian]

I'm spec-ing up an Intel NUC system and am looking for a 2x16GB 2400MHz (or faster since 2666MHz is pretty much the same price anyway) memory kit. All the usual suspects (Corsair, Crucial, Kingston etc) seem to offer them at similar prices. I'm not really too bothered about £20 or £30 price difference here or there, reliability is more important for me and I presume that so long as the memory spec meets or exceeds the specs of the NUC itself then performance will be governed by the NUC/CPU anyway.

Does anyone have any particular preferences on memory supplier based on past experiences or are they all much of a muchness?

I confess then when buying regular desktop PC RAM I tend to be swayed by how impressive the heatsinks look on the basis that better heat dissipation is going to give better reliability but with SO-DIMMs I don't have that to judge them on hence the question.

- Julian

[Infrasonic]

Samsung RAM is often supplied in OEM boxes I've noticed, and as their SSD's tend to do very well in reviews then I'd assume they are well regarded for RAM quality too.

[PrincessB]

I had problems with several Crucial memory modules in a row. This was my experience and not in any way a statement about the company.

Since then I've used Kingston and Crucial and not had an issue.

I'm spec-ing up an Intel NUC system and am looking for a 2x16GB

Heavy workload? Memory is expensive at the moment, about £10 per gig which means you're spending £320 on the ram and sticking it into a tiny case where everything else is going to thermally throttle down.

Personally I'd go for 16GB and spend the spare £80 on a thermal solutions.

Regards,

B.

[GeoffF100]

I had problems with several Crucial memory modules in a row. This was my experience and not in any way a statement about the company.

Since then I've used Kingston and Crucial and not had an issue.

Are you saying that you had problems with Crucial modules in the past, but more recently they have been OK?

[Julian]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Very helpful.

I had problems with several Crucial memory modules in a row. This was my experience and not in any way a statement about the company.

Since then I've used Kingston and Crucial and not had an issue.

Are you saying that you had problems with Crucial modules in the past, but more recently they have been OK?

Yes, I was confused by that. Either what you suggest Geoff or perhaps PrincessB had a typo and one of those "Crucial"s was supposed to be "Corsair"?

- Julian

[PrincessB]

Are you saying that you had problems with Crucial modules in the past, but more recently they have been OK?

Sorry,

Short answer, I made a typo and meant to say Corsair and Kingston. I've not used Crucial since, as for complex reasons I can get employee discount from Kingston.

Longer answer, I had Crucial modules fail three builds in a row. Such is life, I had a similar run with Seagate hard drives a few years ago.

My main point (apart from getting names wrong) was that I'm not blaming the companies, you get runs of bad luck as well as good ones and human instinct is to change supplier. I would also note that I've been using Seagate hard drives again without issue for a few years now.

Hope this resolves this.

Regards,

B.

[Infrasonic]

Micron, Samsung and Hynix are the big three RAM producers, most other stuff is badged derivatives.

Edit: And they've been done in the past for price fixing, huge fines. There are moves afoot on that front and co-incidentally the prices of SSD's and to a lesser extent RAM are starting to come down again, so timing may be important here to get a bargain...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/3 ... ing_again/

[Julian]

Thanks all. Everything is clear now.

On the cost thing, I've taken PrincessB's advice on board. 32GB is indeed overkill for my usage so I will spec 16GB. I can always upgrade a few years down the line if necessary. I'm hoping this PC is going to be good for at least 5 or 6 years, maybe even longer. Sadly I think Microsoft are about to gobble up all of the money saved on RAM. Details in a new thread I'm about to post.

- Julian

[Infrasonic]

More on the price fixing allegations here...https://www.extremetech.com/computing/2 ... ufacturers

The Chinese government has opened a formal investigation into the pricing strategies of Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, after conducting significant investigations into the alleged price-fixing carried out by those firms for the past several years.

Cont.