now I haven't unboxed a whole lot of memory on my show in general and there
is a reason for that uh so first of all actually I should start with my intro
I'm going to be unboxing a mushkin Blackline kit of memory today so this
features their Ascent heat spreaders and
that is one of the key differentiating factors which leads me to why I don't
really unbox a whole lot of memory there's not much to it you find a good
reputable manufacturer that offers good support mushkin in this case offers
lifetime warranty on all of their memory sticks
then it comes down to a few key things you get the right kind of memory so if
you have a ddr2 system you buy ddr2 DDR3 DDR3 and so on and so forth then you got
your capacity this is a 2x2 gig or 4 gig kit and so you can actually find that
along with capacity one of the ways you increase capacity is to have more sticks
so you might have a dual Channel kit with two sticks or you might have a triple Channel kit with three sticks
depends what kind of a system you're running so memory comes down to voltage
and speed that's pretty much it so a kit
that runs at a reasonable voltage and runs at a good speed and that speed can
be both in megahertz as well as in terms of timing uh one general rule that you
can use when you're picking out a memory kit is that every speed bin increase in
the frequency of the RAM so that means if you go from PC2 6400 up to PC2 8500
is worth the same as about across the board a one reduction
in the latency so a PC2 6400 C4 kit is
about equivalent to a PC2 8500 C5 kit
which is what we have here today wow that was a long intro I'm terribly sorry
why don't we just have a closer look at these modules and then we will be on our
way so first of all the back of the box has uh instructions on how to install
mushkin memory watch closely and then
thumbs up win okay awesome so let's get the box
opening
okay and the first module I love their
Ascent heat spreaders I mean these things are actually like they're heavy
they have some real weight to them even though they're made out of aluminum so
you can look down the heat spreader so you can see that the fins actually go up
quite high from the top of the module now these aren't like Corsair dominators
in that there's actually another level of PCB that goes up higher than the
module so they're not quite as high profile and they're going to have
overall better compatibility with most motherboards and coolers as a result of
that now um why don't we turn it around to the side so you can see there's a
nice brushed aluminum finished on the heat spreader itself you got a little
sticker there telling you that your warranty is void if you remove it oh it
doesn't even say that well your V warranty is void if you remove it and it
also tells you the speed that your module is running at as well as the
latency so that means that if you ever get confused you can just check right on
the side of your module and you can set the appropriate settings in the BIOS now
now if you actually look down into the I don't know if you can see that or not
but if you look kind of into the module you can see that there's actually a um a
copper layer under the aluminum so that's where you're going to get some of
the cooling from this particular uh heat spreader I believe the ascents use like
a vapor chamber design in order to get maximum cooling for the modules so why
don't I just grab the other one just for the sake of completeness and showing it
to you together and that pretty much concludes my unboxing of the mushkin
Blackline PC2 8500 4 gig C5 RAM kit now this is going to be
kind of an overall unboxing of their Ascent heat spreader so take it for what
it is and these guys just get into everything look at
this