M2N32 SLI Deluxe shipped with pc2-4200 533 not 667 or 800

[SoftwareGuy]

Hi
I bought the M2N32 SLI Deluxe wireless bundle deal from Tiger Direct and they included 1GB of memory which at first glance looks good. But when I got it the module was PC2-4200 533Mhz which is the slowest type. I am sure that they are looking to make a buck off of me but no other memory site (crucial, kingston, newegg, compusa even) has yet to recommend that memory part for this board except Tiger Direct. PC2-5300, pc2-6400 and pc2-8500

What am I missing here? Should I call and ask them if I can buy up to a better memory? Has Tiger crippled my new motherboard? :(

From what I see now I kind of feel that I have been given a deal on the mobo only to have a cheap memory bottleneck ruin it. Not what I would expect from Tiger Direct.

Module name Bus clock Chip type Peak transfer rate
PC2-3200 200 MHz DDR2-400 3.200 GB/s
PC2-4200 266 MHz DDR2-533 4.264 GB/s
PC2-5300 333 MHz DDR2-667 5.336 GB/s1
PC2-6400 400 MHz DDR2-800 6.400 GB/s
PC2-8500 (planned) 533 MHz DDR2-1066 8.500 GB/s

[The Wise Monkey]

You should always be aware of bundles from websites - you could end up getting a raw deal.

Did you get this package simply because of the added memory?

[Rob]

The bundle is a really excellent price. You may have given up some performance to get such a good price, but maybe not that much.

In many cases the speed of the DDR2 RAM has made very little difference in the overall system performance. For example, different speeds of the otherwise same Crucial DDR2 RAM would not make a big difference in overall system performance.

Keep in mind that the same amount of Crucial RAM like I'm using in My Super PC would be about half the price of the bundle alone. So if it the performance is not the same then that would not be too surprising.

Once you have the computer assembled, maybe you could post some benchmark results, such as 3DMark05 or Half-Life 2. I'm interested to know how well it performs.

[SoftwareGuy]

I was already looking at that mobo and was pricing out all of the mother components and this was was about $150-$200 less. I didn't care about what the case looked like, power supply, etc so I assumed that they matched up components that worked together better into a bundle. Well, it seems that they bundle the mobo with stuff they wanted to dump like that 533Mhz memory.

Like I posted before, none of the memory manufacturers are recommending this slower memory for this board. Even Newegg doesn't do that, just Tiger Direct.

I haven't checked to see if Tiger Direct will let me buy up to the PC2-8500 or at least the PC2-6400 memory which is what should have been mated with this new board.

Rob, you posted that memory is a computers the bottleneck so that is why I was surprised, unhappy, feeling duped, that the slowest memory on the market came bundled with this machine. Now I am worrying about the power supply quality.

[The Wise Monkey]

I'm sure that your PSU will be fine - just sell the memory that you got with the bundle on eBay and buy some higher quality stuff if it bothers you.

[SoftwareGuy]

Well, I don't know enough about memory speeds to judge.

The 1GB Ultra didn't come with a heat spreader. I see that most memory parts do have one, how does this help the memory? Is it important to have one?

I also was reading on Crucial website that the Asus M2N32 SLI needs to have memory installed in pairs. I haven't read the manual on the board yet but I also see this same information on Newegg. The bundle only contained one 1GB component instead of 2 x512MB. Crucial was very clear in their write up that pairs were required.

[The Wise Monkey]

I think they mean that if you buy 2 memory sticks you should put them in the dual channels rather than in the same channel.

I have the SLI Deluxe (not the wireless one though) and I have been running perfectly well with 1GB of Crucial Ballistix for the past year.

[SoftwareGuy]

What speed is the memory you have been using?

what about a heat spreader? Does that make a difference with memory parts? Its seems most all of them have them.

Thanks

[The Wise Monkey]

I've been using PC2-5300, which was pretty good when I bought my stuff a year ago. It still ran Vista pretty well, but operated at about 60% at all times. Even so, it never blue screened, even when running at about 90%+.

Heat spreaders are only really needed if you decide to o/c your RAM. Most of the higher performance RAMs (Ballistx, Dominator, Reaper etc) come with heat spreaders already installed.

If you want to go down the o/cing route, buy some decent RAM and get yourself a RAM cooling fan as well.