Is generic DDR400 no good?

[alent1234]

I"m looking to upgrade my P3 933 after a few years of faithful service.

I'm looking to buy an Abit NF7-S, AMD Athlon XP 3000 and either 512MB-1GB of RAM. I'm still thinking about SW Galaxies. I'm going to keep the rest of my components. I went to the store today and the owner said I should get the expensive Corsair RAM instead of generic RAM since it's dual channel. I'm not planning on overclocking, just upgrade the PC for work and to play games.

Is there any downside to going with any old generic DDR400 PC 3200 RAM instead of the name brand stuff? For generic I was leaning to mwave RAM, and for name brand the Crucial.

 

[Chaotic42]

If you buy generic memory, you will get burned my friend. It's happened to me, it's happened to many others. Stick with Kingston/Mushkin/Crucial/Corsair/Samsung

 

[MasterHoss]

Well, stay away from the generic crap. Also, since you're not going to OC, no need to get the expensive Corsair XMS memory. Crucial is perfect for you... even Kingston or the cheaper Mushkin RAM will work just fine.

 

[Insane3D]

IMO, you should get the 2500+ instead of the 3000+ and use the saved money towards a nice stick of the Kingston HyperX. On the NF7-S you can simply change the multiplier of the 2500+ and essentially havea 3000. Most of the 2500+ will run past that speed with no extra voltage or cooling.



Edit:

Here are some prices from Newegg.

NF7-S - $123
512mb HyperX DDR400 Kit (2 x 256mb) - $124
Retail 2500+ - $89

 

[NesuD]

don't waste your time wit a dual channel memory kit unless it is cheaper than to single sticks which it normally isn't. I had a dual channel kit that didn't work so i returned it and got 2 single sticks of Corsair pc3200c2 512s cheaper than the kit and they work perfectly in dual channel.

 

[Remedy]

Originally posted by: alent1234
I"m looking to upgrade my P3 933 after a few years of faithful service.

I'm looking to buy an Abit NF7-S, AMD Athlon XP 3000 and either 512MB-1GB of RAM. I'm still thinking about SW Galaxies. I'm going to keep the rest of my components. I went to the store today and the owner said I should get the expensive Corsair RAM instead of generic RAM since it's dual channel. I'm not planning on overclocking, just upgrade the PC for work and to play games.

Is there any downside to going with any old generic DDR400 PC 3200 RAM instead of the name brand stuff? For generic I was leaning to mwave RAM, and for name brand the Crucial.

I use Generic across all my clients systems. The only problem with Generic is that, you can't overclock it or advance the timings to it. They have specific SPD that runs @ the slowest time to increase stability. Not to mention the mild noise factor in 4 layer PCB's. But They work.

Intel chipsets usually dislike them because the chipsets are strict on ground loop factors I believe. In brief, the Generic works in 3rd party chipsets. All the Nforces I've built have Generic dram and clients have yet to call back in months with uptimes reaching upto 12months from day of build. Samething goes for VIA and SiS. Very forgiving on Generic Dram.