After having some mushkin and ocz memory crap out on me this month I ordered replacements and went with Kingston this time.  Out of curiosity since everyone here seems to have oodles of experience, who is your preferred memory manufacturer?  And if you've ever rma'd with them how was the experience?

 

I've built my own pcs since I was around 14 or 15 years old from spare parts obtained through my moms work at first then by way of part time jobs in high school.  I don't even know how many computers I've built but when it comes to memory i draw a blank when it comes to preference.  I always just bought whatever was a good price and up till recently had never really had any issues.  For reference I'm 36 now so I've not been doing this quite as long as some of you . Anyway was just wondering the above as I sit watching memtest86 run on 2 machines to make sure I remove all the bad modules.

 

Brian

 

I do not have a preferred manufacture, I typically go with the cheapest named manufacture. All make good memory, but they all seem to go through quality control issues from time to time. I have been lucky and have not run into the problem you have although I know it's just a matter of time.

I dont have a preferred memory manufacturer either.. Though I do tend to end up with a lot of corsair memory...

Though my unraid box is using kingston ECC memory.. My theory is you can test memory as soon as you get it, if its working then, its very unlikely to fail later unlike hard drives etc..

so manufacturers arent that important... unless you are going for really high end memory with the fastest speeds etc

Kingston -- it's cheap and it works.

I stay away from Crucial.  They have a lifetime warranty, but unfortunately you'll need it.  RMA back every 6-9 months or toss in the round file! 

 

Corsair and G.Skill have always been good to me.

Hynix, many thanks to being heavily used in the OEM server market (Dell, HP...) they can be had used pretty cheaply on Ebay.  Never had one go bad and they are almost always on the workstation/server class motherboard approved memory lists.

 

Where I work the memory failure rate for a 3 year span is around 1 stick out of 100, and each time it was DOA.  Have yet to have one fail while in use (and I am taking 10+ TB total worth of RAM here)

Always buy the cheapest available.  Never had any problems. 

Always use Kingston.  Can go to www.kingston.com and look up compatible memory by motherboard.  Get the compatible model(s) and find them on newegg or where ever to actually buy it.

Kingston is my favorite for budget RAM (especially for unRAID), but I like Corsair as well.  I'll generally use Corsair in a faster (gaming/production) build.  Sometimes I branch out to G.Skill, Crucial, or others if I find something on sale.  I've generally had very good luck with RAM.

Preferably someone who really understands the technology.  Coming from a hardware design and a semiconductor background, I favour brands like Crucial for DRAM and Lexar for flash (both brands operated by Micron who fab the chips).  Hynix - again, they make the chips so should know how best to use them.  At the frequencies involved these days, memory design is a very demanding science.