Generic or Name brand?

[majewski9]

What is the difference between name brand ram and generic ram? After all don't a lot of companies use the same chips from the same ram manufacturers? Is it the CL rating that drives up the price of the ram?

I have always used cheap ram and it seems to work just fine! I have never used ram from Mushkin or Crucial. Am I missing out on superior products?

 

[Kingofcomputer]

some only make ram chips.
some also make the pcb and solder them, and also sell them as their own name.
some just buy ram chips and solder them on pcb to sell as their own name.
some just buy a complete product and sell as their own name.

buying cheapy generic, you don't know
what chips are there (unless you're buying at local store or computer show so you can see it before making the purchase),
if the spd is written properly (may not be an issue if you can disable the spd in bios),
how's the soldering process,
how's the qc process,
you don't have lifetime warranty (the local store gives you lifetime warranty, do you think they'll stay in business forever?),
compatibility warranty,
etc...

the price of high quality brand name like crucial is so cheap now,
you should not go for generic for saving few bucks.




<< Is it the CL rating that drives up the price of the ram? >>

No.
Crucial 256M PC133 CL2 and CL3 price difference is just 2 bucks.

 

[mchammer187]

get crucial
name brand for cheap

 

[m2super]

Consider yourself lucky, I have heard many horror stories of people troubleshooting their systems for days to find out the cheap pos ram they bought/skimped on was the cause of their problems!

Crucial pc133 cas2 ram is 39$ for 256 megs! I use both crucial and mushkin and have never had an issue!
Part of what your paying for is customer service and the other is quality!
I had a gf ddr with ram sinks on both sides when inserting into the agp slot I accidently snapped of a piece of the crucial ram it wouldnt work anymore, told crucial what happened and I had a new stick in 1 week no questions asked! Thats customer service!

 

[JeffDogg1979]

It's a crapshoot with generic ram. You could get gold, but you could also get coal. The same can be said for buying name brand ram.

I know I've spent $$ on supposedly good *cough* crucial *cough* ram, only to have it dead or POS when it gets to me.

Take a chance on the generic, but if the difference is less than $20 go with a name brand.

 

[MasterHoss]

Try to always avoid generic RAM. It's just a little scarey to buy RAM with questionable manufacturing processes. Whether you're OCing or not, buy name brand stuff. And plus, Crucial is selling RAM for dirt, dirt cheap.

 

[majewski9]

yeah I assumed this much! I want to get PC 150, but it is quite a bit more than PC 133. Can I get good PC 150?

 

[NelsonMuntz]

I too have used generic and found it to be satisfactory. It won't overclock like my Crucial, but it works fine at stock level. It is kind of a crapshoot though and although you can get bad stuff from a good name brand like Mushkin or Crucial, it is much less likely.

 

[majewski9]

How about kingston? I have 128meg PC 133 of theirs and it works great!