Off brand memmory

[The curious James]

So I'm considering building a new rig. I was wondering does name brand ram really make a real world difference. For example a G.SKILL Aegis 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 vs Team T-Force DARK 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400. Please help me understand.

[AnonymousGuy]

Yes, brand matters.  G.Skill, Kingston, Crucial have all earned reputations of lower failure rates of memory.

[WereCat]

8 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Yes, brand matters.  G.Skill, Kingston, Crucial have all earned reputations of lower failure rates of memory.

The only DRAM manufacturers are Samsung, Micron and Hynix.

G.Skill, ADATA, etc... will buy DRAM from these and make their own PCB and SPD that may or may not be optimised for certain platforms.

They also bin the DRAM, thats all.

 

Failure rates should be prety much the same with each brand.

[The curious James]

But is their better performance 

[TahoeDust]

15 minutes ago, The curious James said:

But is their better performance 

Two kits running at the same speed and timing, regaurdless of brand, should perform equally. 

[AnonymousGuy]

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

The only DRAM manufacturers are Samsung, Micron and Hynix.

G.Skill, ADATA, etc... will buy DRAM from these and make their own PCB and SPD that may or may not be optimised for certain platforms.

They also bin the DRAM, thats all.

 

Failure rates should be prety much the same with each brand.

My guess (and it is a guess) is that lower-tier ram vendors buy "b stock" dram that is functionally downbinned or less reliable than what the top players get.  Less validation, less optimization of tertiary timings, running it out of spec, etc to cut cost.  Maybe don't even bother testing it after putting the dram on the substrate, just ship it like that and deal with warranty claims later.  I'd be interested in learning if this is actually the case or not.