Matching memory to a motherboard

[thecoffeeguy]

noubourne has been very helpful in providing items for my rig that I am now going to build.

Being the nut case that I am I am always curious to find out more about products so I can be knowledge of what I am buying and if anything goes crazy, I might be able to figure out.

In this case, I am going with a ASUS P5ND2-SLI motherboard and a Pentium D 940 775 Dual Core (3.2ghz) CPU.

Now, I want to have 2gigs RAM (in 1gig sticks) if the price is right.

Reading the specs for the board, I see it takes 240pin DDR2 RAM and DDR2 Standard is DDR2 667.

Noubourne pointed out this product:
OCZ Gold Series 2gb RAM

After the $40 MIR, it is $150. Good price and in my range.

For kicks, I went to the OCZ website, typed in my mobo and items to see what their site recommends, and it comes back with this RAM:

OCZ Gold Series DDR2 533

Slightly different.

My question is, why would OCZ site recommend this, a 533 when the board is standard 667?


I thought it was interesting and would like to know, for my own knowledge.

EDIT: I should mention, I am not terribly interested in OC my memory. Probably never do it.

Thanks

thecoffeeguy

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Lastly, is there much difference between:

DDR2 667 (PC2 5400)

vs.

DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)


And why is the DDR2 533 more than the 667?

What would be a good fit for my motherboard? I get confused on the 4200, 5300, 5400...

 

[redgren]

Either will work fine.

The main differences that I can see between those 2 dimms (besides the speed - 667 vs 533) are the timings. The timings on the 667 are relaxed (4-4-4-12) vs the 553 (3-3-3-8).

Now which will give better performance? I haven't seen a conclusive benchmark on speeds vs timings, and personally, I would take the 50 bucks you would save from buying the cheaper dimms and put them towards something that will give you a bigger system boost (Hard drive, Graphics adapter, CPU, etc)...

Good luck.

 

[thecoffeeguy]

I guess the thing that concerned me the most was the difference in the numbers:

5300 and 5400

Can my mobo support either? No problems with either?

 

[redgren]

Those are just different names for the same thing. Here is the JEDEC naming conventions for DDR2 memory.

(See the attached table)

Any of these would work with your MB. Since you're not planning on overclocking, just buy the cheapest 'quality' DIMMs you can get. (But I would say stick with 533 as your minimum clock speed).

 

[bamacre]

If you are not OC'ing the cpu, just use this memory...

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=85016-47

This memory works great in that motherboard. I've used it for quite a few builds.

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Interesting stuff.

This particular memory says it is PC2 5400. When I went to ASUS website, I see it would work with PC 5300, which is why I started to wonder if this particular memory would work.

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Just for kicks, here is a link of PC5300 memory (2x1gb kit) from newegg.

From the list here, what are good brands? Which would be good to use for gaming (but not OC'ing)

PC2 5300 2gig kits

cheers