Eric Garay

Have you ever second guessed the RAM you’ve chosen or have wondered if you should’ve bought the faster, more expensive stuff? If so, you’re not alone. We’ve all done it. But, with a little research, you can save yourself some money and make the right choice. Let me show you what I’m talking about.

I recently received some Corsair Dominator 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel memory. This kit operates at 1600MHz at stock 8-8-8-24 memory timings requiring only 1.65 Volts. It’s some of the newest memory that’s compatible with motherboards using the new Intel P55 Chipset. You can find the memory on Newegg for roughly $129, or so.

Corsair offers a faster sibling dubbed the Dominator GT 1600MHz which operates at 7-7-7-21 memory timings also requiring 1.65 Volts. The difference here is the memory timings. The lower timings mean extra performance. But, this memory also costs about $164.99 due to the better ICs used to build the modules.

Since, I have a good quality GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD5 motherboard on hand, I was able to get the Dominator CAS8 kit to run CAS7 without any issues. All I had to do was enter the BIOS (by pressing the DEL key during initial boot) and find the memory options. Upon finding the timings for Memory Bank 1 and 2, I manually changed the first three timings from 8 to 7 and the TRAS from 24 to 21.

Some less sturdy motherboards might require extra Memory Voltage, but the P55-UD5 didn’t need it. The Memory Voltage was left to Auto in the BIOS which has run perfect now for over a week. It even passed MemTest which is pretty useful for detecting any memory errors that are associated with weak memory or bad timings.

If you’re planning on a computer build right now, or are going to order one, make sure you get a good quality motherboard. Chances are that the performance memory you’re buying will offer very similar results. And, all you had to do was change a few settings without shelling out extra money to get the same performance as the elite grade memory.

I’ve been putting a lot of time in to validating and testing many different Intel P55 motherboards. Thus far, I’ve handled ASRock, ASUS, GIGABYTE, Intel, and MSI. Me and my colleagues over at Futurelooks, are hoping to include EVGA and ECS soon so we can offer you a complete look at the P55 based motherboards out there.

Many readers like to see the final verdicts, scores, as well as Pros and Cons. The problem with skipping to the end of our reviews is that you often zip past details that are very important to the system you’re configuring. Maybe your CPU cooler is too large, or there’s problems with the RAM you’ve selected, or perhaps you’re about to buy a motherboard with far more functions and cost than you really need. We do the work, so you don’t have to.