I use Crucial because I like their web configuration tool, and it's very high quality. Corsair is similarly high quality, tends to be more expensive. G.Skill gets high ratings for speed, but I don't know about the quality. Mushkin is also a high speed/quality? brand. Kingston is a solid performer, but the quality's not as high as Crucial or Corsair in my opinion. And to round it out, I'm running OCZ in my home computer that has probably about 8 hours of use on it over the last 2 years.

Certainly, there's a part of me that likes the confidence of Crucial's guaranteed compatibility.

Do I need to worry about voltage or latency or anything? Or will any DDR3 SDRAM 240-pin work?

EDIT: Hmmm, now I'm seeing that you can get 10600, 10660, 10666, etc... in speeds. I think I'll end up with Crucial where they guarantee that compatibility!!

Any difference between, say, 12800 and 1600 speed if I'm not gaming?

I'd stick with the 10600, since that's what all the other DIMMs will be.

Working with large images in Photoshop, faster RAM will improve performance (slightly, just as it improves game performance slightly), but you'd have to have it all the faster speed. I'd not bother (even though I did bother when upgrading my system from 16 to 32 gig, I replace all the RAM with faster--I had a buyer for the old stuff though).

I have G.Skill in a couple of machines at home and haven't had any problems.

I should say that when I said "I don't know about the quality" that was meant as I don't know, not being skeptical.

Tom said it best above! Thanks, guys!

Ken, that's exactly how I read it in the first place. I was just trying to provide a data point.



Just wanted to preserve that little snippet to document my worth to society.

One more very quick question:

The Dell Ram is 1333MHz. If I found faster Ram (DDR3 1600) at a good sale price is there a disadvantage to the mismatched speeds, or would I simply not be able to take advantage of it?

(They would be installed in two matched sets of three, so 3X DDR 1333 2GB sticks, and then 3X DDR 1600 4GB sticks added).

Thanks guys! Hopefully I'll get this wrapped up today.

I've not mismatched RAM for a long time. It is supposed to gracefully degrade, and everything run at the speed of the slowest. I assume that still works, but don't have any firsthand experience.

Is the price good enough that you could go back and buy 3 more if you do end up with compatibility issues?

It's a Newegg sale, $108 and free shipping after a promo code.

Yeah, I guess I could buy two sets, though the promo price only runs through the weekend I think.

It sounds like it _might_ be an issue, and maybe I should just order all 24GB mow or get something at the same speed, huh?