Upgrade: RAM choices.

Bertison · 11 Nov 2014

Hi folks, looking for a little advice please. I am upgrading a grandson's desktop from a socket 775 to an 1150, with improved gaming capability. This is the new spec, parts on their way, sourced as cheaply as my budget allows: -
Gigabyte B85M-D2V. Pentium G3285 Anniversary edition (Overclockable to 4.8! won't take it that high.)
MSI GTX 750 with Akasa Venom CPU cooler.

The old build has an OCZ 500 SXS2 PSU, Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB Hdd and a Coolermaster 334u case which is only 2 months old. All dimensions measured for fit and I have in my parts bin, two sets of DDR3 RAM -
(2x2 GB) Corsair Vengeance CMZ4GX3M2A1600C9 and -
(2x4 GB) Crucial PC-3 10600 CT25664BA1339A. My question is, which is the best memory for this build?
I am aware that this rig will not allow the very top end games, but it is a step up from his AMD 4870 and the 775 socket.

All advice gratefully accepted!

ignatzatsonic · 11 Nov 2014

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1150 - GA-B85M-D2V (rev. 1.1)

above are specifications per Gigabyte for that board, namely:

2 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory
* Due to a Windows 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than the size of the physical memory installed.
Dual channel memory architecture
Support for DDR3 1600/1333 MHz memory modules
Support for non-ECC memory modules
Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules

The Crucial PC3-10600 is DDR 1333. The Corsair is DDR-1600, slightly faster.

Attached is the Qualified Memory list for the board from Gigabyte. Neither of the above are on it, which doesn't mean they won't work.

I'd confirm both will work. If both did, I'd go with the faster RAM, unless you have specific reasons to believe you will use the 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th gigabyte of the slower RAM. If you do have reasons, then use the 8 GB pair.

Layback Bear · 11 Nov 2014

If you already have both sets of ram then just try them both and pick one.

Bertison · 11 Nov 2014

Thanks guys, two very good pieces of advice. I will try the Bear's plan first I believe. But thanks for the PDF Iggy!