Memory recommendations

Sometime after the holidays I want to add more ram to my new Gigabyte P27GV2. I have no clue what brand to go with. I noticed yesterday while adding a new Crucial 550 that it currently has an 8 gb stick of Transcend in it. Any recommendations? I plan to add 2 8 gb modules so I can go ahead and max it out at 24 gb.

Thanks

 

as a general rule i always advise never mix manufacturers speeds or settings... your best off for performance and stability to pull you current memory and chuck a memory kit in it sell your current ram on ebay to recoup a little back.

No point in upgrading if your possibly sacrificing stability and reliablity you might get lucky or you might cause yourself a world of pain before you realise its your memory messing you about.

corsar vengence is a nice reliable safe bet but if your overclocking your ram i cant recommend it probably g skill or hyperx impact something along those lines... there are a lot of decent and not that expensive kits.

 

RAM is RAM is RAM.

Mixing RAM isn't going to cause much of a difference vs tossing your existing RAM and buying all the same thing. My W520 has a mix of Samsung RAM (factory-shipped) and Mushkin RAM (aftermarket) and it's been working flawlessly for the ~3 years I've owned the laptop/RAM. In addition, I've bought some addition memory for my desktop, so that'll come a mixed setup as well (I focus on prices, not names). So long as your memory passes Memtest, it should be fine. All that you need to worry about with RAM is the clock speeds (and maybe CAS and voltage, if you want to worry about that), as mixed RAM will default to the slowest configuration between all the DIMMs (e.g. if you mix a 1333MHz and 1600MHz stick, both will run at 1333MHz).

That said, as far as brand/model goes, pretty much any brand/model would be fine for use provided you're not overclocking it (which, imo, is a waste if you're not using something that would tangibly benefit from faster memory, like the iGPU). Just check out reviews on Newegg, TigerDirect, etc. to make sure there isn't any obvious defeats that affect a non-trivial amount of people and you should be fine.

 

Right. Other than being OCD like me, there's no real need to go with same-same RAM. You might want to match CAS timings if that's important to you, otherwise, even that's not an issue, it will just run at the slowest CAS the two can manage together and likely at a CAS no higher than 11.