SPCR

Im in my last phases of building my computer, but it hit me that there are qualifed ram for each motherboard.

So then I looked up the motherboard I was going to use
ASUS P8Z68-M Pro LGA 1155 a Micro ATX at the Asus website and obtained a Qualifed Vendor List for ram.

Which is all fine and dandy... but while I was looking online for cheaper ram, I managed to go to the ram vendor's site that I was looking into... which happened to be
G.SKILL ECO 8GB F3-12800CL8D-8GBECO

And ended up seeing that it wasnt tested with the P8Z68 boards... and I end up searching for more ram and the other rams only had the P8Z68V... the Full ATX support but not the micro atx version.

So what should I do now? Search each vendor on that list and try to get a match for ram/motherboard on both ends or just go with one of them? and also be ok with the full atx versions?

OK not the P8Z68-M Pro, but my local hardware dealers is offering five different Asus P8Z68-P Pro board/CPU/memory packages. There are four different types of memory supplied. These are Corsair Vengeance Jet Black LP, Corsair Vengeance Artic White, Corsair XMS3 and Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey. This RAM has a variety of voltages from 1.35 to 1.65. I assume the dealer would not be supplying such a variety of memory chips unless there was confidence they would work OK. I have no idea whether any of these are on the QVL but hopefully this info may help in terms of your quest for cheaper ram.

I have not yet found a mainboard that did not work 100% reliable with Kingston ValueRAM.

Go to the memory configurator at: http://www.kingston.com/

This is the memory test I recommend:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Microsoft calls it "Windows Memory Diagnostic" which a stupid name as is boots up directly from a floppy or CD using only the mainboard's BIOS. It has a very plain menu system.

Hint: press the T to run extended tests.

Keep in mind, even "recommended" ram can be bad.
I test all ram with memtest86+. (not sure how memtest compares with the Microsoft test program recommended above...)

So its test it yourself deal eh?

For the best reliability now and for the many years you own this computer you should:

> never overclock
> never overvolt
> never undervolt
> only buy QVL memory or Kingston ValueRAM and test it for at least 24 hours

Some people say Reliability is Job 1.

Well im thinking of underclocking my video card by 5%, to negate the overclock of 5%... might underclock the entire system by 5% instead to reduce the heat... will that do anything to the longivity of the system?


Aside from that im pretty much only looking for the QVL ram...

Honestly, I've never had an issue with RAM that's not on the QVL as long as it's good RAM that runs at the correct voltage for it's spec (1.5v for DDR3, of course). My understanding (though I wasn't building desktops at the time) is that the QVL and RAM compatibility issues came up earlier this decade when RAM vendors started selling faster memory that required voltage over the spec, and many/ most motherboards couldn't supply it. I can't possibly imagine why the full ATX and mATX would not support the same memory...