Legit Reviews

Just got an e-mail from Mushkin and from this second on the following memory part numbers are no longer being built.

Effective Immediately Mushkin will be discontinuing the following items.

991439- 512MB XP4000 REDLINE
991440- 1GB XP4000 REDLINE Dual Pack (2x512MB)
990771 256MB HP2100 2-2-2
990892 512MB HP2100 2-2-2
990708 256MB HP2100 2-3-3
991489- 1GB XP3700
991481- 2GB XP3700 Dual Kit
991441- 512MB HP3200 REDLINE
991436- 1GB HP3200 REDLINE Dual Kit (2x512MB)

It all about Competition!

After looking at the parts like all the Redline PC-3200 and PC-4000 memory modules are EOL (End of Life). This means that Mushkin is no longer selling any Redline memory modules. If you have been wanting to buy some of these modules and have been holding off do so you need to buy now!

Mushkin Redline XP4000 1GB (2 x 512MB) Current Pricing
Mushkin Redline XP3200 (512MB) Current Pricing

Oh cruel cruel fate

making some phone calls now, but it seems that Mushkin's source of Winbond CH-5 UTT IC's has dried up and they don't want to use the BH-5 die. Looks like the Samsung TCC5 IC is going to be Mushkin's IC of choice.

Mushkin Redline

Born: 5/6/2005
Died: 10/17/2005

I dunno, I think using BH-5 would be a good choice though, even though they're voltage-hungry (from what I've heard anyways). If not BH-5, then why not use TCCD? They clock pretty well. But then again you could probably make the same case for the Micron fat-body chips as well. Oh well, tis a shame, guess I better get some money and see if I can't get a 1GB kit of redline PC-4000 for my DFI board.

Yeah, why the preference for CH-5 die chips over the BH-5?
That truly is a shame that the lifespan of the lower speed Redline products was so short! OCZ is really the only other company to offer something like that.

Also, would Mushkin really use TCC5 chips in redline modules? Or are they just going to focus on low latency DDR products that don't need a bunch of juice to perform?
Seems like a very interesting turn of events as the market for the Redlines and even OCZ's VX line have seemed to be (at least from what I can see) pretty strong.

May the budget Mushkin Redline rest in peace.....

y'know, out of the DDR2 round-up review Nate did, I liked Mushkin the best, it was definitely the most promising. A close second, due to value, is A-Data, not to mention the performance for the money. I was surprised by it, at 9 cents a meg it's not bad. Guess I'll need to get a DDR2-supported board sometime in the future, one step at a time though, need to get through this system first, lol

killswitch83 wrote:Guess I'll need to get a DDR2-supported board sometime in the future, one step at a time though, need to get through this system first, lol

HAHA, yeah, good call ;)
I think DDR will survive in the shadow of DDR2 for a good while still, kinda like AGP and PCI hanging on by the chin of thier chinny chin chin against PCI-Express big bad wolf. But the fact that it looks like AMD is going to go DDR2 and never look back will definately put another major nail in the coffin of DDR since Intel chipsets are prettymuch already solely based on DDR2.

I think AGP will die before DDR does, but they are both being ruthelessly abandoned. I'm pleased about the adoption of PCI-Express but I would like to see still more development in the DDR2 market before I'm satisfied. Pretty soon single cored processors will suffer the same fate DDR, AGP, and PCI.

Damn, it looks like we're in the midst of one of the larger technology transitions in computer hardware history! It's all almost happening at once too. It will be even more interesting to see how DDR3 and the other new memory technologies play their cards in the coming years and how long DDR2 will really live
The voices inside my head say that DDR2 will not live as long as DDR
But I think PCI-Express and Dual/Multi cores are definately the future for some time to come.

Will BTX the next to take over?!

I pray not, because I want ATX to survive, just based on the fact it's an architecture I'm very fond of, and familiar with. I don't really like the idea of the PSU near the bottom of the case, once again because I'm not really all that used to it, and I've not really seen any advantage over ATX, but maybe there is (though they claim it keeps the system cooler). We'll have to see I guess.

I'm looking foward to BTX.

ATX is fine and all, but it was designed without any thought put into airflow design, not at the fault of the designers of course since heat wasn't an issue back then.

With BTX, air will come straight in the front and straight out the back, or something like that. Much like how Apple made their G5 cases. Of course, BTX is optional for us, Apple was forced to do their heatpipe BTX style case because they kept pushing IBM for faster and hotter G5s to try and keep up with AMD and Intel offerings.

I think I have a picture of the airflow diagram, lemme check.

Edit: Here ya go.
http://xs51.xs.to/pics/05422/img_airflow_sm.jpg

CPU, GPU, chipset, and memory all lined up neatly in line with the 120mm fans.

Ok, so maybe the memory isn't always lined up perfectly, but it's better than having it block airflow to the processor like it did before on ATX, lol.

looks good, but how would you mod something like that to keep the airflow proper, but introduce more air? put more fans in the front, or maybe something higher-flow? What can I say, I question everything to try to push systems to the max and beyond as possible and probable by the human mind, lol.

gvblake22 wrote:Yeah, why the preference for CH-5 die chips over the BH-5?

OCZ 3200 gold and their GX range use UTT BH5 chips... theese chips don't like too much voltage -- ~3.4v max is the average for the new gen BH5 die's

The OCZ VX range and Mushkin Redline use UTT CH5 die's
CH5 was/is able to cope with more voltage

the older BH5/BH6 chips scaled better than the newer gen chips
The CH5 chips can get higher simply because people are pumping upto 3.8v into them

My new UTT BH5 sticks don't like much more than 3.4v (infact I can goto ~230MHZ @ 2,2,2,5 with 3.1v - adding another .3v only gets me an extra ~5Mhz!)

Mushkin was finally sold as they have been a subsidiary of an open market capitalist company since it's inception. thier parent company had to please thier share holders.

now that Mushkin's parent company has sold them, they are now a self owned company. the owners? yup, every single employee of Mushkin.

Just watch out in the upcoming year, Mushkin is going to come on hard trying to get back market share from OCZ and Corsair. their first new design? the new heatspreaders they have out now.

in a study done by an internal source of the Corsair company and published to the open market for thier competition to have access to also, they tested OCZ's new mesh heatspreaders, Corsairs own aluminum heat spreaders, and no heatspreaders at all.

heres the results:
254mhz mem bus for Corsairs extended brand heatspreaders
253 for the OCZ mesh heatspreaders
253 for Corsairs aluminum heatspreaders
250 for no heatspreaders

what Corsair has found, is that the most heat conduction isn't thru the top of the drams, it's through the PCB.

so what does Mushkin have to do with this? well thier new line of heatspreaders have the drams touching the heatspreaders, but inbetween the dram, they have wide open holes for air to go down and circulate thru, cooling off the pcb. this is just one such new innovation that mushkin has in the works.

it's all right here http://www.legitreviews.com/article/299/1/

i wonder what taking off the heatspreaders, using some super glue in the corners and AS5 in the middle of dram heatsinks, like micro cool heatsinks, and blowing a low flow 25cfm 80mm fan on them would make the ram do?

TGM

Just a quick correction, Mushkin was an independently owned company befor the were bought. They have been sold and are now independent again

infinitevalence wrote:Just a quick correction, Mushkin was an independently owned company befor the were bought. They have been sold and are now independent again

i got me point accross tho

they had a sale last week to get rid of everything out of their warehouse. I got some old school original BH-5 that is in the mail now :D