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| Thread: My RAM broke... |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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doomnezeu
Supreme Hero
Miaumiaumiau
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posted December 25, 2008 09:03 AM |
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Quote:
Well you're on the right track if you are gonna get Kingston. they are great and I haven't had any problems with the Kingston RAM. 
If you need ram for gaming, Kingston suck incredible amounts of @ss. Adata for the win.
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted December 26, 2008 12:18 AM |
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Kingston are very good because they're the most stable, and I haven't seen others with ECC.
Data >>>>>>>>>>> Performance for me.
Also, I think Corsair and Kingmax are the best in performance, not that I'd care.
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Nikita
Famous Hero
Meepo is underrated
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posted December 26, 2008 03:04 AM |
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Nice right ,regular DDR is probably 3 times less then that.You should check out TigerDirect
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I havent lost my mind... I have it backed up somewhere 8-)
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted January 11, 2009 06:03 PM |
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Edited by TheDeath at 18:09, 11 Jan 2009.
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OK so I've been searching for a long time for a system that would meet my requirements, which are somewhat simple yet the I hate the manufacturers for not providing ECC support for the motherboard (RAM modules with ECC relatively easy to find), UNLESS I go for higher-end desktop or workstation OR server. But the server motherboards are extremely expensive if they have a PCI-E x16 slot (the lower-end server motherboards, while comparable to high-end desktop motherboards in price, lack a proper video slot, they work with an x16 card slot, but the chipset only allows it to run at x1 -- 16 times less bandwidth).
I'm not picky about graphics, but at least I want a card that is a little better than my current (old) Galaxy with Nvidia GeForce FX5200 chipset. I know I know, but I am NOT into ultra-gaming with new games (most are **** anyway, for me at least, from what I've seen and read) and sucking up all my resources and power to the max. I'm not one of those extreme gamers who want extreme performance -- I want STABILITY.
(come to think of it, probably it's because of those damn gamers that manufacturers don't put ECC on most motherboards/chipsets, cause gamers don't care about their data at all  )
Ok with that settled, and with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 which I put my eyes on, I had to find a mobo with only this simple criteria:
1) LGA 775 socket with at least 1333Mhz FSB for the Core 2 Quad Q9550 (45nm must also be supported on the BIOS)
2) ECC RAM (modules not a problem to find (I can get low-end server RAM modules for that), problem is the motherboard support for it!)
3) A simple x16 PCI slot.
With the above criteria it's not like I'm asking for too much (you could argue otherwise about ECC but meh). Surprisingly few DESKTOP chipsets support ECC, so I got somewhat frustrated.
Server chipsets (and motherboards) support ECC (hey, those are for data stability  , not for wacko gaming  ), but these chipsets are VERY poor at the video -- such as that one accepting x16 cards, but ONLY running at x1 (some server chipset limitation).
I could go for higher-end server boards but those are more expensive than a full-blown system with a high-end desktop board. 
(if anyone knows any inexpensive server board (limit is around 370$; trust me, that is 'cheap' for server standards), that works with ECC, Quad Core (doesn't matter if Core 2 or Xeon really, but I would prefer Core 2) and a full x16 slot (chipset uses it full) please let me know)
So what next? I looked at some expensive server boards and found out Intel's X38 chipset (they use it). I did some research into it and it seems it supports ECC, although whether the specific motherboard's BIOS supports it is another matter. What's funny is that it seems this is the ONLY chipset (from Intel at least) to have x16 support for PCI-E video cards and to have ECC -- even the X48 (the successor) does NOT have ECC. I repeat, the successor does not have ECC. (furthermore, X38 works with ONLY DDR2 ECC modules, while it supports DDR3 but must NOT have ECC -- anyway DDR3 is too expensive for not much performance increase anyway, so it's fine!).
I had to look for high-end desktop boards (since the low-end ones lack a chipset to support ECC) or workstation boards (which are expensive usually).
I found out some few boards with X38 chipset, so they should support ECC. Unfortunately, this chipset is also loaded with all other crap like a dual x16 configuration with some crap like ATi Crossfire, which I won't need (I don't even get ONE high-end video card, but a mid2low-end one, so why would I need 2 slots?). This is a problem because clearly the price says something about it (it's way more expensive than a lower-end desktop board, and it's still a desktop board, not a server one).
So since I'm frustrated of searching for it, I'll probably just hand out money on some board like that -- at least it's less expensive than a server board, but it also may have problems. However I'm not exactly sure if it'll support ECC or not -- I read somewhere that memtest86+ doesn't display ECC support (it says "ECC off" or something) but in other places they said that it works with ECC -- remember, I want it to use ECC mode, not just "work" with it but IGNORE the functionality (of ECC).
With that said I'm running out of options. And really fast. And there is also the issue of choosing between Asus P5E WS Pro (more expensive) and Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 (less expensive but still having what I need -- and it's an overkill for me already).
(also I like these two features of the Gigabyte):Quote:
# Ultra Durable 2 Motherboard
# All Japanese manufactured solid capacitors
So I thought about going with this one, although if you can take a look at it's specification you will see that it has A LOT OF THINGS which are OVERKILL for me, and a lot of slots for stuff I won't even need. Unfortunately there is no lower-end board with X38, damn manufacturers and their stupid way of choosing chipsets and designs  (how I wish I could order one customized myself  ; and yes, it has 2 video card slots for sheer money waste ). Funnily enough like I said before, the Gigabyte boards with X48 chipset don't seem to work with ECC (I'm not even sure about the above one if it truly USES ECC or just "ignores" it which would be a total waste! ). On Intel website (they make the chipset), it says X48 does not support ECC and that X38 does but only with DDR2 modules (fine with me, Gigabyte mobo doesn't support DDR3 anyway and it's expensive too).
So from what I have now, I'll go with the following build (note I haven't ordered ANYTHING yet, I'm just posting what I put my eyes on; if you have any suggestions to meet my 3 criteria or remarks about bad experiences with this configuration (unfortunately we all have), PLEASE SHARE):
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
RAM: Kingston 4GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC CL6 DIMM (Kit of 2) or Kingston 4GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit of 2) * (see note below)
Video Card: Don't know yet, probably some Galaxy or Gigabyte (I have now a Galaxy so I trust them, it still works after many years), with a mid2low-end Nvidia chipset. (probably even a 7000 series if it's advantageous in price and energy consumption, or probably a not-very-powerful 8000 or 9000 chipset, I'll see...)
The rest of the components don't have compatibility problems, but I'll get a SATA HD obviously (I have an IDE one now), and a Card Reader -- I became a Flash memory freak after I lost faith in CDs and DVDs and their reliability.
Cards seem much like CDs in that they need some reader (unlike USB sticks) but are more robust than CDs (and probably than USB sticks since they can get damaged at the USB plug and not work anymore, while I can just buy a new card reader in the other case  ). Do they have problems with static electricity? (at least they don't have with heat as much as CDs or DVDs).
* There isn't much difference in price between the 800Mhz and 667Mhz, HOWEVER note how the 667 one has a CL5 while the 800 one has CL6 -- which is more latency, which is BAD (an extra clock cycle). If we DIVIDE the frequency by the latency we should get a number which represents the 'raw performance' of the module, and the 800Mhz one has a SMALLER value (meaning is it less performing?). 133.333333... compared to 133.4. So I could go with the 667.
Also, anyone know if I should get a better cooler (or fan) than the supplied one with this processor? (I might overclock it a bit, since the mobo supports up to 1600Mhz FSB so I could use the full range (proc has 1333Mhz) and probably increase the clock speed accordingly (without touching the multiplier) to around 3.1 Ghz).
Is there much difference between the Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 (my planned mobo) and the GA-X38-DS5?
Some software like Zbrush use so-called "software rendering" (I'm also a software rendering freak ) so it doesn't use a GPU much, but it is massively threaded so it will work very well with a Quad Core CPU. Another example would be ffdshow filter (try to Google it) for decoding movies in xVid and applying a lot of post-processing filters to make it look better (the video is the same small sized file, no need to make an upscaled video, which I hate to do since it's a waste of storage space) -- the "resize" filter especially with a certain slow (but good looking) algorithm can be slow and is multi-threaded so Quad Core can come to the rescue, I get extreme lag in movies if I use it now with my current Pentium 4 processor ).
Oh and it's a shame that these boards are not microATX format -- I would have liked to make my comp smaller 
I have found PLENTY of microATX server boards from SuperMicro, who work with ECC but again -- they lack a proper x16 video card functionality, and probably only work at x1, x2, x4, x8 etc... (not to full bandwidth)
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted January 11, 2009 06:35 PM |
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Yu said you aren't going to use a powerful graphics card so that 8x PCI-E won't be a bottleneck then.
I think 3000 line ati's are quite low power. Not sure but I think low end 9000 Nvidias are too.
7000 and 8000 nvidias are power freaks. And high end 9000s are too.
Need it be Nvidia? For Linux compatibility? 4000 low end ati's are also pretty low power.
If you're going overclock a quad core then yes, you need another cooler. They're small heat plants al ready on stock clocks.
Since you wanted just ECC memory that's what you get. Low latencies. You might be able to overclock the 667 memory to 800. Not sure with what latencies though.
DS5 for has two more sata slots, better cooling and some more quality parts(VERY FEW!). Also better bios.
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted January 11, 2009 06:45 PM |
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Edited by TheDeath at 18:47, 11 Jan 2009.
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Quote:
Yu said you aren't going to use a powerful graphics card so that 8x PCI-E won't be a bottleneck then.
Sorry I meant a powerful GPU, not the data bandwidth but the card's processor (that is, I don't really need one)
Quote:
I think 3000 line ati's are quite low power. Not sure but I think low end 9000 Nvidias are too.
7000 and 8000 nvidias are power freaks. And high end 9000s are too.
Need it be Nvidia? For Linux compatibility? 4000 low end ati's are also pretty low power.
Yeah well somehow I am more used to Nvidia, never used an ATi, old habits die hard
I'll look at ATi 4000 then.
EDIT: What's with Linux? ATi don't support it? I was planning on using a virtual machine software to test it in the future but if it doesn't work cause ATi are asses, then I'll probably go with Nvidia.
Quote:
If you're going overclock a quad core then yes, you need another cooler. They're small heat plants al ready on stock clocks.
I don't overclock it much, just a tiny bit (it already have 2.83 Ghz) to use up all the FSB, otherwise I waste it (and thus, my money on it ).
Quote:
Since you wanted just ECC memory that's what you get. Low latencies. You might be able to overclock the 667 memory to 800. Not sure with what latencies though.
You meant high latencies?
Low latencies is a dream (and means better)
Not sure I'll overclock it though, the processor has big enough cache anyway (12 MB).
Quote:
DS5 for has two more sata slots, better cooling and some more quality parts(VERY FEW!). Also better bios.
Hmm might get it, not that much more expensive thanks.
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radar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Castle/Haven player
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posted January 11, 2009 06:56 PM |
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Edited by radar at 18:58, 11 Jan 2009.
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Quote:
7000 and 8000 nvidias are power freaks.
My 7300 consumes 25W, which is less than my old 5200 did
Even 4650 consumes twice as much.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted January 11, 2009 08:09 PM |
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Yup, I meant high latencies.
Low end graphics usually use only a little power. 7600 my brother had was a huge power drainer.
Ati does not have good linux drivers.
I'm writing from my cell so excuse me being short.
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