# EVGA RAM?



## The VCR King (Jan 1, 2017)

I have seen some pictures online of EVGA's "Microcenter Exclusive" RAM kits. I have checked on MicroCenter's site and there are no reviews for them, and online they aren't for sale anywhere else.

Is anyone on here running EVGA brand ram? If yes, is it good stuff or nah?


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## Intel_man (Jan 1, 2017)

Uh... they're not known for making RAM, so it's probably just a rebrand from someone else. Most reputable brands for RAM are limited lifetime warranty anyways. Just buy the cheapest one of the speed you want with the lowest timings.


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## johnb35 (Jan 1, 2017)

I've used them in builds and haven't had any problems yet.  So I'll continue to use them if they are cheaper.


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## The VCR King (Jan 2, 2017)

Intel_man said:


> Uh... they're not known for making RAM, so it's probably just a rebrand from someone else. Most reputable brands for RAM are limited lifetime warranty anyways. Just buy the cheapest one of the speed you want with the lowest timings.


I think it's rebranded Corsair but I'm not sure... It looks darn close to Vengeance ram.


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## Laquer Head (Jan 2, 2017)

Why not just go with Corsair, GSkill, or HyperX and not even have to question anything?


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## The VCR King (Jan 2, 2017)

Laquer Head said:


> Why not just go with Corsair, GSkill, or HyperX and not even have to question anything?


I'm running Corsair Vengeance and I love it. I'll probably go Corsair in all my builds in the future.

I was just asking about the EVGA ram because it was new to me and I was curious and wanted some opinions from you guys.

On a side note, can I overclock my RAM? I am running it at 9-9-9-24 now, could I boost it to say, 10-10-10-26?


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## Intel_man (Jan 2, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> I am running it at 9-9-9-24 now, could I boost it to say, 10-10-10-26?


That's going backwards. Faster = lower numbers for timing. so running it at 8-8-8-21 or something lower will be better. However, with memory, it's often you see increasing the speed will overcome the increase latency with higher timings. 

Overclocking RAM is trading higher timings (higher latency) for faster speed (measured in MHz). You can overclock RAM in the same sense that CPU's are rated by Intel/AMD to by default run at a specified speed and you go beyond that. Hence why there's DDR4 ram out there that's capable of 3200MHz when Intel processors running DDR4 by default run at 2133MHz.

To simplify things, if you buy DDR4 ram that is only rated for 2133Mhz, I would not go beyond 2133. If you dig deep enough (doing your research), sometimes there are RAM out there than can go above their rated value, but it's almost always never worth it to do so. If you want to overclock DDR4 ram, just buy them that are rated at 3000 or above. Or... just do what most people should be doing, unless the mobo BIOS can't read it properly for whatever the reason is... set your memory options in your BIOS to run off of the XMP profile.


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Intel_man said:


> That's going backwards. Faster = lower numbers for timing. so running it at 8-8-8-21 or something lower will be better. However, with memory, it's often you see increasing the speed will overcome the increase latency with higher timings.
> 
> Overclocking RAM is trading higher timings (higher latency) for faster speed (measured in MHz). You can overclock RAM in the same sense that CPU's are rated by Intel/AMD to by default run at a specified speed and you go beyond that. Hence why there's DDR4 ram out there that's capable of 3200MHz when Intel processors running DDR4 by default run at 2133MHz.
> 
> To simplify things, if you buy DDR4 ram that is only rated for 2133Mhz, I would not go beyond 2133. If you dig deep enough (doing your research), sometimes there are RAM out there than can go above their rated value, but it's almost always never worth it to do so. If you want to overclock DDR4 ram, just buy them that are rated at 3000 or above. Or... just do what most people should be doing, unless the mobo BIOS can't read it properly for whatever the reason is... set your memory options in your BIOS to run off of the XMP profile.


I've heard that Vengeance RAM is good for overclocking due to the heatspreaders on it. I just want to do a minimal overclock on it just like .1mhz to poke around and experiment. 

My processor is currently at stock speed, 3.2 MHZ and I want to try to overclock it to 3.5 but because of how fast my PC boots my BIOS is impossible to get into.

Remember from a previous thread...


Darren said:


> No he's right. Some MSI BIOS are flat impossible to get into, even if you sit there spamming the key constantly. My previous board pretty much required me to use the MSI utility to get to BIOS. I just disabled quick boot when I needed to get into BIOS, otherwise I'd have to load into Windows then restart using the MSI utility.



My BIOS is impossible


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## Darren (Jan 3, 2017)

Intel_man said:


> That's going backwards. Faster = lower numbers for timing. so running it at 8-8-8-21 or something lower will be better. However, with memory, it's often you see increasing the speed will overcome the increase latency with higher timings.
> 
> Overclocking RAM is trading higher timings (higher latency) for faster speed (measured in MHz). You can overclock RAM in the same sense that CPU's are rated by Intel/AMD to by default run at a specified speed and you go beyond that. Hence why there's DDR4 ram out there that's capable of 3200MHz when Intel processors running DDR4 by default run at 2133MHz.
> 
> To simplify things, if you buy DDR4 ram that is only rated for 2133Mhz, I would not go beyond 2133. If you dig deep enough (doing your research), sometimes there are RAM out there than can go above their rated value, but it's almost always never worth it to do so. If you want to overclock DDR4 ram, just buy them that are rated at 3000 or above. Or... just do what most people should be doing, unless the mobo BIOS can't read it properly for whatever the reason is... set your memory options in your BIOS to run off of the XMP profile.



As a side note, playing around with RAM timings can have a pretty noticeable impact on performance/smoothness IMO. At least in my setup with my mismatched RAM kits. XMP profiles wouldn't even boot and the defaults the BIOS tried were garbage. Just get them set to what your sticks are designed for. GTA V and Fallout 4 in particular were noticeably smoother with more consistent frames after I fixed my RAM speeds and timings.


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> As a side note, playing around with RAM timings can have a pretty noticeable impact on performance/smoothness IMO. At least in my setup with my mismatched RAM kits. XMP profiles wouldn't even boot and the defaults the BIOS tried were garbage. Just get them set to what your sticks are designed for. GTA V and Fallout 4 in particular were noticeably smoother with more consistent frames after I fixed my RAM speeds and timings.


In Fallout 4 my FPS is all over the place (jumps from 40 to 60 a lot) even on the lowest quality settings and my poor 6950 has the fans at 100% and is near 80-C and I want to overclock so I can run like medium quality and have a smooth 50 or 60FPS with it.

I already have a mild 20MHZ overclock on my 6950. Any more than that and my screen turns solid red and locks up and I need to reboot and reflash the card back to stock.


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## Darren (Jan 3, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> In Fallout 4 my FPS is all over the place (jumps from 40 to 60 a lot) even on the lowest quality settings and my poor 6950 has the fans at 100% and is near 80-C and I want to overclock so I can run like medium quality and have a smooth 50 or 60FPS with it.
> 
> I already have a mild 20MHZ overclock on my 6950. Any more than that and my screen turns solid red and locks up and I need to reboot and reflash the card back to stock.



Fallout 4 is kind of all over the place for performance. You can try some of the texture mods for performance bumps, those helped me a little and probably would you noticeably. Forcing VSync off through ini config also makes a very noticeable difference. Your hardware is obviously holding you back the most but I got pretty familiar with that game and optimizing performance. PM if you want any more help with it, but don't expect a night and day difference.

Relevant to RAM timings, you can see here what kind of performance changes I got just in benchmarks from making a few tweaks.
https://www.computerforum.com/threads/different-ram-kit-weirdness.238698/


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## Intel_man (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> At least in my setup with my mismatched RAM kits. XMP profiles wouldn't even boot and the defaults the BIOS tried were garbage.


Yea.... that does happen. 

Which is why people always recommend to avoid mismatch ram kits.


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## Darren (Jan 3, 2017)

Intel_man said:


> Yea.... that does happen.
> 
> Which is why people always recommend to avoid mismatch ram kits.


Man, that was a long time ago when I was upgrading from 4GB of RAM on my Phenom build with a brand new 7850 in it. I didn't know shit. Also I just grabbed a random kit off Newegg and put in on my Christmas list, I was a nub back in the day.

I think I got a bunk set of sticks anyway because I never could get the Kingston's stable at their designed settings and their XMP profiles according to CPU-Z were not what the box advertised.


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> Man, that was a long time ago when I was upgrading from 4GB of RAM on my Phenom build with a brand new 7850 in it. I didn't know shit. Also I just grabbed a random kit off Newegg and put in on my Christmas list, I was a nub back in the day.
> 
> I think I got a bunk set of sticks anyway because I never could get the Kingston's stable at their designed settings and their XMP profiles according to CPU-Z were not what the box advertised.


Before I went all-corsair I threw in a bunch of random 4GB sticks I had laying around. At one point the Beast was running 1 stick of Corsair Vengeance, one stick of G.Skill Ripjaw, a generic Hynix stick, and a PNY stick. I had all of them down-clocked to match and it worked fine for awhile but the mismatching caused problems sometimes. Eventually I splooged all my allowance on a 4x4GB stick of Vengeance. Best decision I've made with this PC.


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## Darren (Jan 3, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> Eventually I splooged all my allowance


I think the word you're looking for is splurged... 

Splooge is _very _different...


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> I think the word you're looking for is splurged...
> 
> Splooge is _very _different...


"Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to"

Anyways I mowed lawns all summer for some RAM.


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## Laquer Head (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> I think the word you're looking for is splurged...
> 
> Splooge is _very _different...


LMAO....



The VCR King said:


> "Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to"
> 
> Anyways* I mowed lawns all summer for some RAM.*


You need to charge more for your services..


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## Darren (Jan 3, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> "Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to"
> 
> Anyways I mowed lawns all summer for some RAM.


Look it up and get back to me on that. 

Lawn mowing money bought my first PC.


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## Laquer Head (Jan 3, 2017)

Darren said:


> Look it up and get back to me on that.
> 
> Lawn mowing money bought my first PC.



I bought my first computer with money I made chopping turkeys at the meat market..


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

I got the PC for free, I just had to use lawn mowing money to get it running.


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## Laquer Head (Jan 3, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> I got the PC for free, I just had to use lawn mowing money to get it running.


Did you ask for anything for xmas? get anything good?


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Laquer Head said:


> Did you ask for anything for xmas? get anything good?


Nah I didn't ask for any PC parts for Christmas. I just asked for some Steam cards. I don't really want anything for my PC, it's pretty much how I like it now


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## Intel_man (Jan 3, 2017)

The VCR King said:


> I don't really want anything for my PC, I smartened up and realized I shouldn't pour more money into that dump and is saving up money for a proper computer.


FTFY


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## The VCR King (Jan 3, 2017)

Intel_man said:


> FTFY


That was pretty much why I decided not to ask for anything. Only thing I really do want for it is a wifi card but that's about it


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