If for no other reason, I'd buy
Mushkin’s memory simply for their incredibly unique packaging. I would hope that most of our readers are above such simpleton thoughts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you stooped to my level after seeing some pictures, keeping in mind that the real thing is much fun to play with.
Here's a shot of the actual anti-static bag the ram is stored in:
Extras
Pen:
Well, this is interesting. Most other companies bundle some form of printed paper, you know, the kind which has stuff you READ. Instead, Mushkin have chosen to include a pen, which is incidentally something which you use to WRITE. A silly little thought to ponder, ain't it? There’s no documentation to speak of, but everything that you’ll want to know can be found on the Mushkin site anyways. The pen writes in black ink, which may or may not be contain just a trace of purple. ; )
Tech support and Lifetime Warranty:
Mushkin are one of the only ram manufacturers to offer such extensive tech support, including phone help and their own forums. The forums are a great place to have your problems solved by the technicians, and other Mushkin memory owners who may have encountered the same problems as you. From what I’ve seen of the forums, Mushkin also handles returns very well. Lifetime warranty means that as long as you have the ram, you can have it replaced upon failure due to manufacturing defect. Some people just happen to be naturally jinxed, and for those, the lifetime warranty sure comes in handy.
Ram:
Every piece of performance ram I’ve seen in the past six months has been equipped with a heatspreader of some sort, which supposedly helps with heat dissipation. Mushkin uses the same common aluminium heatspreaders as OCZ, although they do have their insignia stamped into it. A large sticker identifies the ram, otherwise, they’d all look the same because of the heatspreaders. Personally, I was hoping to see the purple coloured kind just for a change of pace, but it seems that’s not going to happen. The PCB under the heatspreaders is black as well, which seems a little overkill to me. Take note that although it’s a fancy (if you can call black fancy) colour, the PCB is six-layered, the highest quality currently feasible for ram. Generic ram usually uses 4-layer PCBs to cut costs, which generally results in lower quality, higher rate of failure and loss of overclockability. The actual ram chips play a crucial part, of course. While I can’t say for sure without breaking open the heatspreaders, it’s most likely Winbond 5ns ram chips under there, as pretty much all performance ram at and above PC3200 use those. Even Mushkin states that they use “highest quality 5 ns discreet components available in the memory industry”.
