Is it worth the price premium to buy Kingston RAM?

May 20, 2007 12:23 PM

Is it worth the price premium to buy Kingston RAM?

I have always purchased Kingston memory for my laptops based on advice from friends saying it's worth the price difference. I would love to hear some other opinions on this.

posted by BigBrownBear to computers & internet (28 comments total)

Premium ram is always worth the extra money. I tend to use corsair exclusively because they were a savior when running a very sff pc a few years back.

Cheap, no-label ram is a usually a huge pain in the ass, so spending a few extra bucks to get a more stable box is always a plus.
posted by Lord_Pall at 12:32 PM on May 20, 2007

I wouldn't say that Kingston is a premium brand, I'd consider it pretty generic. You should be fine with any reputable brand (Crucial, Corsair, PNY, etc..)

However within each brand they sell premium memory but you don't really need it unless you want to overclock your system. As long as you match the speed as your other ram/what your motherboard takes.
posted by mphuie at 12:35 PM on May 20, 2007

If your system supports it, you can guard against memory errors by getting ECC RAM.
posted by odinsdream at 12:41 PM on May 20, 2007

RAM currently is dirt cheap so going for Kingston is a good investment and you should be ok.
posted by rus at 12:44 PM on May 20, 2007

Premium memory is worth the cost in my opinion, I have had problems when using budget ram. Personally I prefer Crucial though.
posted by sophist at 12:48 PM on May 20, 2007

Premium memory is often worth it, because it can be VERY difficult to diagnose crazy-assed problems ("oh, it's windows!") as being memory related.

Please do NOT get ECC RAM. Your system does NOT support it, and the ECC bit is slower, since it's a checksum function that runs against all memory calls and is only used for servers where the number of simultaneous memory calls is DRAMATICALLY higher.

Again, it's really meant for servers only. Get RAM with a lower CAS value, but I'll tell you: I'm running on 2 GB of PC 3200 Kingston ValueRAM. When I first bought it, one of the sticks (it was a two pack) was bad, and I wasn't able to pin it down and thought it was my video card. (The POST codes were changing; it was particularly frustrating.)

I finally diagnosed the problem and sent them back and received a new batch, and it's worked fine and fast for the better part of 2 years, but remember that memory is the single tightest bottleneck you'll have on your computer for day-to-day operations.

Consider accordingly, but you can get by without going to Crucial, etc.
posted by disillusioned at 1:13 PM on May 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

How can you say "You can get by without going to Crucial" when you said yourself you bought value ram and it didn't work correctly?
posted by sophist at 1:18 PM on May 20, 2007

In my experience, it's always worth the extra to get a decent brand, and about the only brand I really trust are Crucial, whom I've bought something like 200GB from; I've bought about 1/50th of that from other vendors and had about the same number of problems.

ECC's good if your system supports it; the slowdown is utterly negligable, and as you start counting RAM in gigabytes it really starts to matter (curse those cosmic rays!). Alas chances are your system doesn't support it; check Crucial's memory advisor. Don't confuse ECC with Registered (Buffered) memory, which is a different thing entirely.

Ballistix or whatever flashy memory with LED you can get for more probably isn't worth it unless you're into overclocking or want to pay 30% more for an additional 3% of performance. Crucial especially don't seem to seperate their sticks into "memory we'll test properly before shipping" and "memory we'll let our customers test", while I expect a company like Kingston probably will with names like "ValueRAM".
posted by Freaky at 2:08 PM on May 20, 2007

Kingston (value ram??) is pretty low end. Anything that is 'high end' will say 'ZOMG RACING MEMORY' .. or such. More or less the chips are all the same.. A higher end memory stick is going to be built from parts that are bin'd at a higher memory speed (ie, it passed a test running at PC133, but being sold as PC100).. vs lower end ram that is bin'd at the actual speed y ou are buying (ie, pc100 failed pc133 tests).

The other factor is of CAS timings. Those have a minor effect on performance.

Don't buy ECC Regsitered memory (like everyone says) by accident.

Bottom line: Buy whatever is spec'd for your system, and get it cheap with a lifetime warranty. I usually go Crucial/Corsair/Kingston/Micron/etc. I've sold people hundreds of 'the cheapest stick on Newegg' however, and NEVER had a problem.
posted by SirStan at 2:10 PM on May 20, 2007

Freaky: I have bought over 200 sticks of Kingston ValueRAM and only had one bad chip over the years (arguably from UPS abusing the box..). Kingston definately tests all of their ram before shipment
posted by SirStan at 2:11 PM on May 20, 2007

The last time I bought RAM, there were roughly three grades:

1. Cheap no-name RAM: this is the least expensive stuff out there, but it is also the least reliable. QC is generally poor, and you may even be getting "overclocked" chips (chips designed to run at a lower speed than they are sold as). Avoid this stuff.

2. Midrange RAM: this is what I think you mean by "premium" Kingston RAM. This stuff is more expensive than the no-name stuff, but you generally get what the package says you get. QC is much better. The most expensive midrange RAM comes from computer makers (Dell, Apple, etc.) and is overpriced. Buying the least expensive midrange RAM is tricky because there is some overlap with no-name RAM. I try to buy RAM that is from a reputable packager but not too expensive. Kingston and Corsair's less expensive products have worked well for me.

3. Overclocking RAM: not to be confused with the no-name RAM. Rather than being slower than marked, this stuff is supposed to be better than marked. Sometimes the package is marked faster than the underlying chips are marked, but the packaging company claims that it will run reliably at the marked speed. Oftne you get heat spreaders, LED status lights and other gizmos with this stuff. It might be necessary for overclocking, or it might be a scam. I avoid it.
posted by b1tr0t at 2:14 PM on May 20, 2007

If you need to work to a budget, spend sometime studying the Newegg forums. Customers aren't shy about describing the faults of bad memory.
posted by b1tr0t at 2:15 PM on May 20, 2007

Also note that there are only a handful of RAM fabs in the world. Ultimately, most RAM comes from the same place. The "manufacturer" listed on the retail packaging just buys bulk chips and packages them for sale. They may or may not test the RAM prior to shipping.
posted by b1tr0t at 2:16 PM on May 20, 2007

All DRAM is tested at least twice; once on the wafer, and once after packaging. I believe that *most* DIMM manufacturers do some low-level burn in test after putting the chip onto the DIMM.

Brand-name RAM is more likely to meet and exceed spec, because the manufacturers will have stricter tests. But they don't just throw the bad memory out--they do everything they can to get their money back out of that memory. Some memory is retested against looser specs, and repackaged under a generic name. Some memory is sold and used as "half-capable". (If I have enough half-bad chips, they may be able to rewire a DIMM to have half the capacity.) When you buy generic, you may or may not be getting memory like this. Personally, I like to avoid that memory.

(As an aside: They may even sell the memory for use in applications that can tolerate errors: I know for a while, a lot of digital answering machines recorded onto broken RAM. Now you know why the sound on your old machine was always crackling)

In any case, when you buy memory, brand name or not, I recommend testing it using something like Memtest86+. I usually that program for a day or two on every system I build, so that I know that the memory and motherboard work together, and also to work through any infant mortality problems in the system.
posted by IvyMike at 3:00 PM on May 20, 2007

If KINGSTON represents 100% of the price of average RAM, and value is 80%, and premium is 130%, I'd go with Kingston. If premium is 115%, go with premium. If a reputable VALUE brand is 70%, go with value.

YMMV.
posted by mhuckaba at 3:05 PM on May 20, 2007

That being said, I'd go for 2x as much value RAM over premium RAM any day, especially on a laptop.
posted by mhuckaba at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2007

Kingston and Crucial both make very good, very reliable memory. Memory in general is pretty reliable, but the testing is better in the premium brands. What they are mostly selling is 'good testing'; the chances of their chips failing is lower than most.

There's also 'performance RAM', which is a complex and confusing web of different voltage and speed specifications. Kingstron and Crucial tend not to be as good here; I tend to look more for Corsair and Mushkin in this space. This RAM tends to be much more expensive, and the reliability is generally lower, because the chips are often being driven past their real specifications. Generally, if you don't know you need this kind of RAM, you don't.

If your pocketbook is limited, the no-name/cheap brands will usually work fine... OCZ and Patriot are two examples. In exchange for less money, you have a higher chance of something going wrong; the failure rates are much higher in the cheap RAM. However, even if the failure rate is five times as high, it's still a very low percentage, overall.

If you just want RAM that works and that you don't have to think about, Kingston and Crucial are excellent choices. The chances of anything going wrong are vanishingly small. I tend to point most folks at this solution, because malfunctioning RAM can be hard to diagnose and extremely irritating. If you need to trust your computer, just buy good RAM and be done with it.
posted by Malor at 3:14 PM on May 20, 2007

I've purchased both Corsair and Kingston's Value line memory and its been just fine. I've had no trouble running them within specs. There were a few little kinks with one system, but updating the bios ended up solving the problem.

There doesn't seem to be as much choice with laptop memory, so I think I've usually ended up with kingston or crucial.

I've avoided ever pushing memory past it's rated specs because the 1-5% improvement in performance isn't worth the hassle to me.
posted by Good Brain at 3:50 PM on May 20, 2007

I just bought 2 GB of RAM from Crucial, thinking that they were both a name that I'd heard for a long time and the price was *very* good. It is nice to see here that they also have a good reputation.
posted by john m at 4:37 PM on May 20, 2007

From my perspective, what makes name brand RAM worth the extra few bucks is that it usually comes with a lifetime warranty.
posted by flabdablet at 5:39 PM on May 20, 2007

I used to have all kinds of memory problems (in various systems, using various brands)....

Until I started buying exclusively from www.crucial.com and I havent had a single memory problem since.

(no, I dont work for them)
posted by jmnugent at 5:47 PM on May 20, 2007

The answer is that budget or no name ram isn't a problem until is a problem.

I have an IT background and have bought and used probably hundreds of sticks of rams over the years. Rarely did I buy so called "name brand" ram unless it was on sale. I've never had a problem, but then again it wasn't until recent years that this even became a question... so, moving forward (if I was still in IT) perhaps buying name brand ram would have become increasingly critical.

In my personal systems I run matched, in house brand dimms from whoever it was I bought my last motherboards from (Newegg?) and I haven't had a problem. Then again, I don't overclock (hey, my car doesn't have NOS either.)

Keep using generic until you have a problem (or not) then you can become one of the converts above blasting on some perceived inferiority while feeling compelled to shell out premium prices from then on...
posted by wfrgms at 5:47 PM on May 20, 2007

Almost all RAM sticks have lifetime warranties. What is that going to get you? Like 3, maybe 4 years of use?

Here is a pretty good example of where I'd pass on Kingston for ghetto RAM:

2GB Memory @ Newegg

400 bucks vs 135, for 2gb. Get 4GB of RAM, turn off your page file on your laptop, and go to town.
posted by mhuckaba at 5:51 PM on May 20, 2007

That's an unusual case, mhuckaba... The Kingston RAM is much slower than the others. It's probably left over stock that Newegg is hoping to dump on some poor sucker.

It would normally be somewhere around the Corsair... probably a little more, as the Corsair in your link is the ValueSelect (ie, cheap) line.

You'll usually pay a premium, but not that much. 3x the price is very, very unusual. Going from $135 for the cheap to $190 or so for the expensive is fairly normal, but $400 is not. :)
posted by Malor at 6:12 PM on May 20, 2007

I always buy ECC (and get systems that support it). I would recommend Corsair. Make sure you get a heat sink thing to clip onto the RAM if it doesn't come with it. When you're talking about electronics, it is of my opinion that most damage is going to be heat damage. I always add heat sinks and fans wherever I can. I've had a good track record on uptime on both servers and home built machines.

Unless you have very, very specific reasons to eek out the last bit of speed, reliability is more crucial than horsepower.
posted by geoff. at 8:08 PM on May 20, 2007

Living in Korea, I just buy the Samsung RAM (in matched pairs) that these companies buy and rebrand. Seems silly to me pay a premium for the brand name when you can get it from the original manufacturer. This list might be revealing in terms of that.

Pro-tip: stay the hell away from Hynix-manufactured RAM, is the word on the streets.

Keep in mind that suitability may vary with your motherboard, too. As I recall, Kingston RAM was a bad choice for the (Athlon 64/DDR) DFI motherboard I used when I built my last system, in part because they don't use the Samsung TCCD, which kicks butt.

Just about everything you need to know and more (about DDR anyway, not DDR2) can be found in this thread (and the sites linked out from it).

Get 4GB of RAM, turn off your page file on your laptop, and go to town.

Never turn off your page file if you use Windows, regardless of how much RAM you have. Let Windows manage it (the default setting). Doing so will not have the result you might hope for.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:23 PM on May 20, 2007

I have been purchasing G.Skill RAM lately b/c it has a lifetime warranty and they appear to be built well and run well in the system. Haven't had any issues thus far, but just ordered 25 sticks for workstation upgrades.
posted by ijoyner at 9:04 AM on May 21, 2007

You'll notice (if you follow my link above) that the G.Skills are mostly Samsung TCCD, which would indeed mean that they rock, so there you go.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:57 PM on May 21, 2007