Question regarding RAM PCS offer

[AdrianR]

Hi

I'm looking at buying a new custom PC. Say something like this https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/cJzpJ8eeQe/) with 32Mb of ram.

I rang up earlier today and asked a few questions, including about the specifics of the Corsair memory they provide. They recommended I get 3600Mhz ram but were rather vague in terms of a few things such as latency, whether it was single or dual rank (they said it was all dual but I think they meant channel not rank!), the SKU (which at least one of their competitors provides).

Thing is they are charging quite a lot for that ram (around £200+ price of a 4gb ram stick) when I can buy Corsair 32gb 3600Mhz CL18 ram quite a bit cheaper than that. Does anyone have any experience of what they provide?

Edit: sorry @TonyCarter I pressed send accidentally before I'd written anything!

 

[DarTon]

As of April (so somewhat stale info), the 3200MHz ram had timings of 16-20-20-38 and the 3600MHz had timings of 18-22-22-42. So latency 10ns in both cases.

In terms of rank, with Corsair RAM it's now a bit of a lottery what you get. Most is single rank on 32GB, 2x16 kits but dual rank kits do still turn up under the same SKU. This is an issue with other brands aswell. For example, Crucial 3600 CL16 (SKU BL2K16G36C16U4B) has been turning up as both dual and single rank for over 9 months. You roll the dice.

From experience, I'd just ignore what PCS customer services say in terms of rank or SKU. The only guide is what recent customers have received in their PCs and even that could change at any time. The only thing you can say is it will be Corsair and 3200 or 3600.

 

[AdrianR]

So what do you recommend? Go with 3600Mhz as PCS said, 3200 or what? Will it matter? I get that as they fit/guarantee it I will pay more. It's more that I would prefer to know exactly what I'm getting. It seems I could get a few different makes with the GPU aswell so two important components seem somewhat down to luck. Even if the actual difference may not be that huge.

 

[Steveyg]

So what do you recommend? Go with 3600Mhz as PCS said, 3200 or what? Will it matter? I get that as they fit/guarantee it I will pay more. It's more that I would prefer to know exactly what I'm getting. It seems I could get a few different makes with the GPU aswell so two important components seem somewhat down to luck. Even if the actual difference may not be that huge.

It depends on what the machine is for, if it's for gaming then 3200Mhz will offer the same performance as the 3600Mhz but if it's production based like editing, rendering, etc then the 3600Mhz will be more beneficial

 

[Bhuna50]

Its also worth noting that you can get a machine built with the cheapest smallest RAM in there and then substitute the RAM yourself if you are finding what you want elsewhere cheaper. Just remember to hold on to the RAM that comes with the machine as you would need to remove yours and put that back in if ever you had to return it for any reason

 

[DarTon]

As @Bhuna50 says you can just select 1x4GB and buy your own. Unfortunately, rather than do that, I listened to PCS, and believed them when they said "we only sell dual rank 2x16gb rank memory". Of course, when it arrived it was single rank. Worse it wasn't even the common SKU, CMK32GX4M2D3600C18, but CM4X16GD3600C18K4D. This seems to be much slower on some memory benchmarks. Fortunately, I had what they said on a taped line and PCS admitted their misinformation and offered a refund.

If you still want Corsair LPX Vengeance then look for versions numbers (not SKU) of the form X.3Y (dual rank), not X.4Y (single rank). I replaced the PCS memory with Vengeance LPX 3200MHz (CMK32GX4M2E3200C16, timings 16-20-20-38), saving £80. It was version 3.32 (dual rank) against the PCS RAM that was version 3.43 (single rank). I didn't think it mattered whether I bought the 3600 CL18 or 3200 CL16 since they are exactly the same Micron D-die downbin. Corsair just put different labels on them. I just plopped it into my PCS PC at 3600 18-22-22-42 (i.e. same settings as the PCS ram).

It's worked absolutely fine and I'm getting 17% higher TimeSpy CPU scores, 10% on most mem tests and a big difference in some of my work activities. It's only added about 2-3% to my framerates on games. So if gaming is your thing then I'd buy 3200 CL16 and move on.

 

[AdrianR]

Thanks for the replies to everyone. Really appreciate the replies.

The computer is for work but I think gaming is probably the most stressful activity it will do so it seems simpler to just go for 3200MHz. I seem to be able to get 2x16gb Corsair for around £140 online so that is a decent little saving. @DarTon. That's a really useful tip on the Corsair. I would like to get dual rank if I could. But as you say it probably won't make much appreciable difference.

I think I need to now go back to the spec and finalize the choice of CPU, GPU, storage etc. I am really happy with a Zotac or do I want that EVGA ...