Hi guys, Out of curiosity, what is the difference between these two types of DDR3: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-...600)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-165v and http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-...0-(1600)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-9-9-9-24-150v The only differences I can see are that the former has XMP, heat spreaders and is rated at 1.65v, as opposed to no XMP, heat spreaders and 1.50v on the latter. Weird thing is, they're exactly the same price In real-world terms though what are the differences? Heat spreaders are rather self explanatory but what do XMP and 1.65v bring to the table? Cheers.
They are essentially the exact same thing, except that the 1.5v set complies with the Sandy Bridge memory voltage specification; the 1.65v set will have been for the older P55 dual channel architecture. Both sets have exactly the same heat spreaders, just a different label design. Get the 1.5v kit since it's a newer revision of the same stuff.
Make sure you check the labelled voltages of the sticks when you get them as the last time I bought some of that RAM the voltage was different to the one listed on the store's website.
Well that clears it up a little then. Thanks LennyRhys. I take it XMP (or the lack of it) doesn't make a difference then? Also - and this really is just out of curiosity as obviouly I won't be doing this, but - could you mix and match these DIMMs if for some reason you wanted to? Would they work together, or would it cause problems?
XMP stands for "Extreme Memory profile" and in this case it's meaningless. Usually you'll find that a module is rated at 1333MHz but has an XMP of 1600MHz, as is the case with the 1.65v set here, because 1600MHz wasn't "officially" supported by the motherboards; but since they both do 1600MHz there isn't really much to it. You probably could mix and match them but there's no guarantee it would work since they are different revisions of the same kit so there's a slim chance they might have different SPD data (which is the config they default to: speed, timings, voltage etc).
