System RAM

FiringSquad strongly recommends the use of brand-name memory in your system builds. Although performance differences "day 1" may not be noticeable, we consistently experience better long-term stability with RAM from companies such as from Corsair and OCZ, especially under our high-stress environments. While we are comfortable saying that there are several manufacturers with high-quality memory products, at the end of the day, we have to pick one manufacturer to use in one system.

We're going all-in with this system build. That means 4GB of RAM (even though a good 0.5GB of it will be lost in 32-bit operating systems due to reserved addresses). Choosing between low-latency DDR2-800 and high-bandwidth DDR2-1066 is somewhat of a conundrum. DDR2-800 C3 RAM is about as fast as DDR2-1066 C5 RAM in real-world applications (see our article on Core 2’s performance with DDR2-667, 800, and 1066MHz memory. Both DDR2-800C3 and DDR2-1066 RAM are spec'd for higher voltages (2.2V) which adds to system heat (in comparison to the TWIN2X2048-6400C4 which is spec'd for 2.1V operation). Corsair's TWIN2X2048-6400C3 is the flagship product from Corsair and offers the best overclockability as well. The 6400C4 and 6400C4Pro offer the best value though.

A few years back, most of us would have said that the added latency of DDR2 meant it was a poor compromise when compared against conventional DDR. Things have changed and DDR2 is now the standard of desktop and server memory. Right now, ECC memory is still outside the mainstream. This isn't likely to change anytime soon. If I left this PC on 24/7, I'd expect 3 memory bit errors to occur each year. (True for AMD-based non-ECC memory as well). Unless you were doing scientific computing or medical-related data processing, most people are going to accept this margin of error rather than add an extra 12.5% of capacity for ECC memory.

Thermal management will be a critical part of our system design. Therefore, we’ll be going with Corsair DOMINATOR modules.

2x Corsair DOMINATOR TWINX2048-8500C5D
$400 x 2

Running Total: $1351