I bought a pair of 2GB 1600 9-9-9-24 Ripjaws for another build a while back, and they are still kicking strong! So when I wanted to build a new PC with one of the new AMD 8-cores, I thought I'd give the ripjaws a try again. Not disappointing at all. I used to be really picky about only using Corsair, Kingston, or Mushkin, but... G.Skill makes some blazing fast RAM that's durable, stable, and pretty affordable, too!
PROS: Installed very easily; no sticking, no awkward fitting design, just slid right in like it was meant to be there. Pretty low-profile; fits nicely under the Cooler Master EVO, and has about a 16th of an inch of room to spare. So when I get my 2nd set of 8Gb sticks all four will fit just fine. Very happy about that. It keeps pretty cool. Even under stress, the heat-spreader does it's job well, no worries. Did I mention it's very fast? Personally, I don't notice much of difference between 1600 and 1866, but I do see a subtle difference between 1333 and 1600, so it's a good speed. Latency and timing are more important though, and these particular specs have always worked very well for me in the past, and now again with my latest build. It's early days still with these new sticks, but the last pair of G.Skill sticks I bought have been running strong for almost 4 years now, and I've never had a blue-screen due to RAM on those sticks yet (or anything other than a corrupt HDD for that matter).
CONS: If I have to nit-pick (and this isn't even specific to G.Skill) I wish there was a wider variety of color choices for RAM that doesn't just depend on the size and model you are getting. Everything else in my case right now is a sleek black or carbon color, with a few deep metallic purple highlights on the motherboard's capacitors and north and south bridge. I would have liked to get some metallic purple or black RAM sticks to match. Still, the blue actually looks pretty nice to compliment the red/orange/yellow of the power cables... but anyway...
FINAL THOUGHTS: No regrets whatsoever. The only reason I would have even considered getting something more expensive was if I just had money to burn. Anything beyond what you get out of this RAM makes very little difference in performance. The only real reason to go for faster RAM (1866 and up) is if both your mobo and CPU are optimized to use it, otherwise it's just a waste. So buy the RAM! You will not be disappointed.
** Also, aside from gaming I do a lot of high-resolution illustration, 3d-modeling, animation, visual effects and editing for digital video, and a lot of rendering! This RAM is great for those purposes as well. These days I wouldn't recommend a digital artist have anything less than 16Gb of RAM in his/her PC. You can get by on 8Gb for now, but 4Gb or less just doesn't cut it when resolutions go beyond 300ppi (print resolution) / 1080p (HD video)... Everything is created large and scaled down though, so even 16Gb isn't ideal if you work with 4K resolution for some theatrical film projects. That's why I'm looking forward to installing 2 more sticks of these bad boys very soon. ;)
| RAM | 16 GB DDR3 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
