Is OCZ ram crap?

[Northern Lawn]

I just bought OCZ 2G 1066 4 GK (PC2 8500) and one of the sticks is defective. My brother had the same ram kit and after a year a stick went bad. He switched to Kingston but I decided to go out and buy OCZ because it was $40 cheaper, but like a said, one stick is bad right out of the package.

I have had a 2 gig kit of OCZ 1066 reaper ram, they did well for the last year or so but wanted to upgrade to at least 4 gigs.. btw, will the reaper and the new stuff I bought be compatible so I can have 6 gigs? is that even desirable?

 

[Blain]

"I decided to go out and buy OCZ because it was $40 cheaper"

Look at it this way, you saved $40, right?

My quality memory list is...
Mushkin
Corsair XMS
G.Skill
A-Data

 

[Absolution75]

Ram is ram IMO. If it has a lifetime warrenty. . . then there isn't much difference from one brand to another.

Some have specialized IC's which can improve overclocking. . . but considering the actual memory chips generally all come from the same company/place, it doesn't much matter (at least to me).

I've gotten tons of DOA ram from all companies. Mainly PQI and SuperTalent though (and a few OCZ sticks have been DOA I suppose). Will I stop buying from any of these companies? No, not really (except for supertalent because one time I had faulty ram which tested okay in memtest . . . though that doesn't matter all that much). Once you get working ram. . . it just works - unless you get a power surge that fries it. . . eh

I've bought ram from all these comapnies (sorted by high volume first)
OCZ
PQI
Corsair
G-Skill
Crucial (HP OEM)
Kingston
SuperTalent
A-DATA

If you feel the need to go for 6GB, then go for it. You can generally missmatch ram from different vendors with different timings and different voltage, but I like to think of the best practice as getting close timings with exactly the same voltage (and just running the ram at the slower timings obviously).

Running 8GB rather than 6GB doesn't really have any advantage other than the obvious extra 2GB. So like I said, if you want it. . .go for it. I've ran some rather strange memory configs such as 2x512MB+2x256MB (1.5gigs), 3GB, 6GB.

Ram is generally the last thing I care about. It doesn't matter much for overclocking or even for speed. The only programs that get an increase in performance with higher speed ram are synthetic benchmarks.

 

[OCGuy]

No, it is not crap.

You and your bro could have had bad sticks from any company. They all get it from the same places and put a spreader on it.

 

[deanx0r]

Lifetime warranty or not, it is still downtime for me whenever one of the sticks goes bad. I bought 2GB of OCZ DDR2 8500 three years back for my Core2 system, within that time, they failed me twice. They weren't even overclocked, I just ran them stocks by specs.

An OCZ rep told me that the newer revision of those sticks runs at 1.9V instead of the 2.1V specified on the packaging! So far so good, and thank god OCZ covered me. But I would rather see better quality control rather than warranty.

 

[deanx0r]

Lifetime warranty or not, it is still downtime for me whenever one of the sticks goes bad. I bought 2GB of OCZ DDR2 8500 three years back for my Core2 system, within that time, they failed me twice. They weren't even overclocked, I just ran them stocks by specs.

An OCZ rep told me that the newer revision of those sticks runs at 1.9V instead of the 2.1V specified on the packaging! So far so good, and thank god OCZ covered me. But I would rather see better quality control than warranty.

 

[Northern Lawn]

Well I drove across town with my one stick of bad ram, I was told to do that over the phone. But when I got there they told me I needed both to do an exchange. I freaked out a little bit because its' a half hour drive each way.

By the time I got back there with both sticks, and they tested them, it turns out they didn't have anymore in stock. There policy is to give store credit, I freaked out again and got my money back.

They were telling me that everything from OCZ is on back order.

Went to different store and spent an extra $40 bucks on Kingston Hyer X 4 gig pc8500 kit. They did work perfect out of the box. I think I'll avoid OCZ for a while.

 

[jvroig]

You should have gone with G. Skill, because they evidently have Great Skill in Memory World. They say so themselves.

More on topic, I am of the opinion it is just bad luck (sorry about that, by the way. Having to drive to the store then being asked to drive back would piss off anyone). I've had experiences buying more expensive Kingston RAM and less expensive PQI ones, or even the dirt cheap RAM modules that seem to be "brandless". They all did fine, while I've heard a friend or two over the years complain about his memory one time or another.

Perhaps it's just bad batches.

 

[Blain]

You should have gone with G. Skill,

But that would have cost him $40 more than the OCZ.

 

[jvroig]

That was Kingston in the OP, but I was just kidding, poking fun at the G Skill tag-line

 

[BTA]

Personally? No I don't really care for OCZ. But that's because of their past and I hold grudges very easily.

I do have a couple sticks around somewhere that still work okay though I must admit.

These days my list of memory goes as follows:

Mushkin
Kingston
Whatever is cheapest and meets my needs.

I've used many many brands of memory through the years. From no-name to the top brand names, And to be honest the brand I saw the most problems with years ago when working on PC's was Crucial.

 

[Andrmgic]

I've never had a problem with OCZ ram.

I'll usually either buy OCZ or Kingston, whichever seems like a better deal at the time.

 

[Northern Lawn]

Argh,,, after all this trouble trouble it turns out my 32 bit windows 7 trial only recognizes 3 gigs out of 4, lol. I guess when I buy 7 I'll have to install 64 bit because I want 8 gigs now

btw, my mobo supports up to 8 gigs of ram.

 

[clusta]

dont think so

 

[lothar]

Mushkin, GSkill, Crucial, and Corsair...Those are the only brand I 'd touch with a 10ft pole. Good quality, and excellent support.
RAM is RAM. Go for the cheapest quality brand you can afford.

 

[n7]

Yup, total crap.

8 GB of crap @ 1.8v DDR2-1140 5-5-5-15...

D:

Seriously though, no.
There's crap from many different companies.
OCZ's cheapest kits don't seem to be quite so hot, but that can be said of most "cheapest" stuff out there...

 

[BassBomb]

haha you blamed it on your kit when it was your OS issue
didnt you know it cant recognize 4gb ? also you could have tested each kit individually to see if any were bad

make sure you set it to the right voltage (i had big problems wihth mine when it was set to SPD (1.8v) instead of 2.1V that it needed

 

[Blain]

Argh,,, after all this trouble trouble it turns out my 32 bit windows 7 trial only recognizes 3 gigs out of 4, lol. I guess when I buy 7 I'll have to install 64 bit because I want 8 gigs now

All that ranting was for nothing? :hmm:
We just assumed you were running a 64-bit OS or at least knew about the 32-bit 4GB limit.

Now we've got you on our watch list for any future threads. :sneaky:

 

[vshah]

i have a 6gb ddr3 1600 kit at 7-7-7-24. unfortunately they don't make it anymore, so i can't buy another 6gb. also the price doubled from 95 when i bought it to ~180

 

[Northern Lawn]

haha you blamed it on your kit when it was your OS issue
didnt you know it cant recognize 4gb ? also you could have tested each kit individually to see if any were bad

make sure you set it to the right voltage (i had big problems wihth mine when it was set to SPD (1.8v) instead of 2.1V that it needed

I did test each stick. One would boot the other wouldn't. Besides one stick is only 2 gigs.

 

[Northern Lawn]

All that ranting was for nothing? :hmm:
We just assumed you were running a 64-bit OS or at least knew about the 32-bit 4GB limit.

Now we've got you on our watch list for any future threads. :sneaky:

How is it for nothing? I was sold a bad stick and my brother had a stick of the exact same type go bad.

You're talking about separate issues.

 

[Ayah]

I've only got OCZ DDR and DDR3 memory, but all of it works fine. About 5(combined) sets of both types and I've never had a single stick go bad.

 

[Northern Lawn]

I've only got OCZ DDR and DDR3 memory, but all of it works fine. About 5(combined) sets of both types and I've never had a single stick go bad.

How is that DDR3, is it much faster then DDR2? I know it's a different notch so you need a different mobo but that's about all I know about it. I imagine it's much more expensive too.

 

[MJinZ]

I think the companies differ by their binning methods and quality control, and most importantly by their support. COmpanies like Corsair will do better testing than others (ensuring lower chance that as a consumer, you get a bad stick).

 

[Hyperlite]

OCZ has recently left a bad taste in my mouth as well. I got a 2x2GB DDR3 1600 kit from newegg, one stick was definitely just plain bad, and the other i couldn't get to run at published settings for the life of me. I ended up getting a refund and going with some ADATA DDR3 1600, which OC'd really well and i'm happy with...and it was $30 cheaper