Thinkpads Forum

Hi folks!
I decided to upgrade to 1.5 GB of memory because of things like video editing, virtual machines and such. A shop offers memory from a variety of manufactures like Crucial, Samsung, Kingston a.s.o., where the price for Crucial is significantly less. Part no. is CT12864X335. Would you trust Crucial or rather go with another brand? Thanks for the insights you can share!

Dont care... both will work fine

So go for the cheaper one.

crucial is good stuff

I'd say crucial and samsung are about the same quality.

Both are used interchangably by most manufacturers.

Same here; I don't think that there is much of a difference between the two when it comes to quality.

I'm still contemplating getting another 1 GB for my T43p and my choice would probably be Kingston. In my part of the world they're a fairly cheap option (compared to other brands), but I don't have any experience with Kingston in relation to ThinkPads.

I think it would be really interesting to hear from people who have experienced memory incompatibilities with particular brands and/or models...

Thanks guys, I think I go with Crucial then.

I bought a 1 GB Kinsgston PC2-4200 (533) for mine and it's worked fine. I've bought Kingston (2-3 times) before with no problems whatsoever.

Warranties are the thing ... I've heard some horror stories about some brands, but Viking, Kingston -- few and far between.

Just my experience.

The main reason why Crucial and Samsung are considered top notch is mainly because you know what your getting.

Most RAM manufacturers just stamp their name on the product, and put it in packaging. The actual chips can come from many vendors of various quality.

Crucial is owned by Micron (whose customers include IBM and Apple), Samsung also makes it's own chips.

As a result, you can rest assured that you know what your getting.

With many brands, your friend can get Samsung, and you can get something from a no-name.

That's why I personally prefer crucial. You know what your getting.

davidspalding wrote:I bought a 1 GB Kinsgston PC2-4200 (533) for mine and it's worked fine. I've bought Kingston (2-3 times) before with no problems whatsoever.

Warranties are the thing ... I've heard some horror stories about some brands, but Viking, Kingston -- few and far between.

Just my experience.

That's exactly the kind of experience I wanted to hear about.

Did you get the IBM ThinkPad certified part number or just their generic PC2-4200 part?

Dunno what you mean by "IBM certified part number," as Lenovo is selling a different brand/part. I bought the type of memory for my laptop from NewEgg.com. Depending on what memory your system takes (try www.thinkwiki.org), you can just buy it. Why buy just what Lenovo wants to make a profit on?

Memory is memory. "IBM certified memory" is like "Harman Karden certified DVD discs" or "Sony certified Hi8 digital video discs."

Sorry, I think my wording may have been a bit unclear. The thing is that Kingston manufactures two seemingly identical parts where one is generic and the other is guaranteed to work with the T43/p series.

KTM-TP3840/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... -TP3840/1G

KVR533D2S4/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... 533D2S4/1G

I have emailed Kingston about it and they replied that the specifications were identical. The former of the two costs about twice that of the latter one, though.

supposely crucial is one of the best chipmaker in us, they also unconditionally stand behind their warranty. centon is another us maker, except they do oem stuff and just recently gone counter.


but micron is what i will recommend, and usually they are not cheap


as for samsung, after all the flexview compare on this forum and how LG is better and brighter than samsung, i no longer like samsung. plus i really hate their cell phones, after 5 min of calling the battery heats up to a temperature that will burn your face.


that is why i don;t like samsung

crucial is micron RAM sold to end users.

They are the exact same products, with different part #'s.

StarTraveller wrote:Sorry, I think my wording may have been a bit unclear. The thing is that Kingston manufactures two seemingly identical parts where one is generic and the other is guaranteed to work with the T43/p series.

KTM-TP3840/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... -TP3840/1G

KVR533D2S4/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... 533D2S4/1G

I have emailed Kingston about it and they replied that the specifications were identical. The former of the two costs about twice that of the latter one, though.

It appears to me that I bought the latter. I really don't grok what the benefit of the former is. That there's a board over the chips? It's "guaranteed" to work with a T43p, when the latter is compatible and "should" work? Pshaw.

[edit]Confirmed, I bought this. Ooh. The price is even better now 2 months later. Considering that the construction of this chip is pretty much the same as the 512 MB DIMM that came in my T43, I really think that "guaranteed" DIMM is just so much bling on top of the mem.

Thanks for the confirmation. I suspected as much, but it's nice to have someone actually confirm that I should be okay with the regular Kingston part.

To the original question "Crucial or Samsung...", well, I've used (and currently use) both and I've had zero problems with either. I feel either brand of chips are among the best on the market, and are quite likely to be used in "brands" where we are unaware of the true manufacturer!

I tend to only buy what I'm sure of, so saving a few dollars on "mystery" RAM isn't for me. As with all my purchases I only buy proven quality from reliable vendors. It doesn't cost much more upfront and saves me a bundle on the back end (in time and headaches too)!

Yak

Amen.

o1001010 wrote:supposely crucial is one of the best chipmaker in us, they also unconditionally stand behind their warranty. centon is another us maker, except they do oem stuff and just recently gone counter.


but micron is what i will recommend, and usually they are not cheap


as for samsung, after all the flexview compare on this forum and how LG is better and brighter than samsung, i no longer like samsung. plus i really hate their cell phones, after 5 min of calling the battery heats up to a temperature that will burn your face.


that is why i don;t like samsung

I have just built a second customer desktop system with a samsung hard drive. The first was an IDE Samsung 200gb 7200rpm 8mb cache. It was amazingly well built, fast, EXTREMELY quiet, and has a good warranty. I liked it so much that when building this second system for a customer I ordered a 250gb Samsung drive with the same specs. This will be paired with an A64 3000+ Venice core, DFI Lanparty motherboard, and a PCI Express x800xl graphics card.

Every Samsung RAM as well as cheap RAM chips with Samsung memory has been wonderful. Never a problem.

I come from a desktop PC "background", where overclocking ability & stability is considered one of the benchmarks that differentiates good RAM from average RAM. So Corsair, mushkin, GeIL, OCZ rise to the top. Kingston, PNY, Crucial, Samsung, hynix, Viking, etc are safe, reliable alternatives yet won't hit the speeds that the premium brands will. Then there's always new players like gigaram, EP Memory, Patriot, Transcend, G.SKILL, pqi, Rosewill, A-DATA, etc. of which Patriot and G.SKILL seem to be the best of the bunch.

Anyways. My 1 GB of OCZ PC4200 4-4-4-8 works flawlessly. $78 after rebate from Newegg.com. It replaces a Nanya branded 256 MB piece that came in my T43. Who the hell is Nanya? Sounds like cost reduction to me...

couldn't resist from chipping in. I love Kingston, always bought Kingston for laptops if that was available. Have two Kingston sticks in the T40 I'm writing this on.

I don't think Micron/Crucial are any worse memory than Kingston, that'd be my second choice (only due to personal preference).

I would also check the warranty on these sticks, I believe Kingston offers a life-time warranty now (on all their memory products, including Flash I believe), not sure about other vendors.

Also, funny thing -- last time I checked on the Kingston web-site, if I just selected that I want memory for the IBM Laptop I'd be presented with a slightly different part number and about 50% higher price tag than if I just searched for the right SODIMM memory by features, not by laptop vendor.

stangri wrote:... Also, funny thing -- last time I checked on the Kingston web-site, if I just selected that I want memory for the IBM Laptop I'd be presented with a slightly different part number and about 50% higher price tag than if I just searched for the right SODIMM memory by features, not by laptop vendor.

I think you probably encountered these....

StarTraveller wrote:... The thing is that Kingston manufactures two seemingly identical parts where one is generic and the other is guaranteed to work with the T43/p series.

KTM-TP3840/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... -TP3840/1G

KVR533D2S4/1G:
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... 533D2S4/1G

For what it's worth, I just installed a 'no-name' 512MB SODIMM in my X40 last week and just had my first BSOD (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) last night.

David -- yeah, that's what I was talking about... Anyways twice now I've bought the "cheaper" Kingston modules for my T40 and they've been working fine for over a year.

Hmmm...the troubleshooting begins. Installed the generic 512 SODIMM on 18 Dec. First BSOD on 27 Dec, after I installed System Migration Assistant and AC 4.01. Skype was installed on 25 Dec. No pattern to BSODs: only happens on shutdown and even then not every time. I'm still leaning toward the RAM being faulty. I thought about bringing it back to shop, but as I can't be 100% certain I'm a little reluctant. As long as I'm not get BSODs as I'm working, I'm OK. *knock on wood*

Yick, if you get BSODs < 30 days after installing said generic RAM, and it is the RAM ... I can't imagine it will "get better" over time. Best find out while your "window of opportunity" for a return is open.

You can always test by taking it out, leaving all else the same, and doing a lot of reboots ... if you don't get a BSOD, the RAM would appear to be the culprit.

[edit]Thanks, StarTraveler, ... yeah, like run the PC-Doctor util and see what comes up. ,:) So easy to forget that IBM/Lenovo gives us these neat system utilities.

DavidNZ, you could also try to run some memory testing utils to see if you can trigger a BSOD.

Thanks for the pointers.

Mem tests work out fine. Uninstalled the cheap RAM and put in the old IBM-branded 256mb chip that was in there before (for over a year). BSOD again, but starting to sense a pattern. If I just do a loop of re-starts, it doesn't happen. But if I use the computer for an hour or so and then go to shut down, I'll get the BSOD. So, it doesn't appear to be the el-cheapo RAM. That means it should be either AC 4.01, System Migration Assistant, or Skype.

I've started by uninstalling System Migration Assistant, so we'll see where that gets me.

I might be enough to simply kill each process using Task Manager before shutting down. It might save you having to uninstall and install each application.

Just kill the process tree before shutting down and see if that prevents the BSOD from happening.

It's a long shot, but a BSOD during shutdown, indicating a service/program that doesn't know how to unload nicely, could be the syndrome. Installed any software very recently? Scanned for malware or add-ins? In the past, some spyware could be detected when it crapped out on shutdown ... some of the sneak-wrap developers couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack....