I liked it so much I bought another one just like it! (TwinMOS 512 MB DDR 400 MHz)

Member Name: isvikthere

Product:	TwinMOS 512 MB DDR 400 MHz
Date:	13/10/03 (761 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good quality, affordable, just a bit more expensive than unbranded

Disadvantages: none to this day

Although the title sounds like it might come from just any other TV commercial it is all true !

Linked to my review on no brand memory titled 'Throw 'em, rope 'em and brand them' I've submitted this product to Dooyoo for reviewing which they gracefully accepted.

The reason for this was that up til now on Dooyoo you only had the choice between branded and unbranded RAM in the reviews.

The point I am trying to prove here is that there is indeed a middle category. I can only describe this category as "Budget Branded". Meaning that it is undoubtedly branded RAM but sold a lot cheaper than the well known high specification brands the likes of Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, etc.

TwinMOS technologies, a company founded Taiwan in 1998, is now active in three fields:
DRAM-modules, Flash memory and Wireless LAN products.

As said in the above mentionned review, in the past I had some bad experiences with unbranded RAM-modules. Therefore when I was building a new system in October 2002 based around an Asustek P4S533 motherboard - that supports DDR333 (PC2700) type of memory - the dealer I was visiting at the time had three categories of memory on offer:
- cheap unbranded,
- expensive Kingston
- and this TwinMOS memory.

For just a few pounds more than the unbranded I took the plunge and bought my first ever TwinMOS product. I had never heard of TwinMOS before and searches on the Web came back almost empty. But it is a purchase I haven't regretted yet and I even confirmed my confidence in the product by exchanging just two months ago an unbranded module that proved troublesome for an identical TwinMOS module.

All technical specifications for the type of TwinMOS memory I bought (a module of 512mb capacity with speed rated at DDR333/ PC2700) can be found here :
http://www.twinmos.com/dram/dram_p_dt_ddr333_u nb.htm

In my experience a hardware manufacturer tha
t takes well care of its website and support pages, not shying away from divulging all necessary information on its products shows to be of a serious nature that is often reflected in the products themselves. This is clearly the case with TwinMOS products.

A bit out of the scope of this review but apparently TwinMOS was no longer pleased by just producing good budget brand rammodules and therefore only last July they brought out their 'Twister' series of memory by which it is mercilessly going for the throat of the big brands. Unlike the memory modules I bought the Twister series of memory modules comes with a fancy (goldcoloured!) heatshield/heatspreader covering the memroy chips. Obviously these Twister memory modules are being sold at a higher price than the standard modules but still at a price that competes very well with the topmodules sold by the big brands.

There is only so much one can say on memory and I can all sum it up in one sentence : Not only is TwinMOS memory good but it even can take some fair amount of overclocking (running it at a higher speed than intended) which is always a sign of a quality product that has sufficient tolerances built in. Also it can sustain far more aggressive memory timings settings than any ordinary unbranded module would.

In fact I am wondering how TwinMOS manages to put this quality product on the market for considerable less money than the big boys ask us for similar quality. Could it be a way to first create a name and a marketshare for themselves and then in the long run go for higher prices ? The future will tell us...

And so far for an amateurs'view on TwinMOS meory , for a more 'professional' opinion (with benchmarks !!) read here :
http://www.hardwarereview.net/reviews/TwinMOS% 20Memory%20Products/TwinMOSmemor y.htm

As you can see in a year's time things have evolved a bit and when you type "+Twinmos +memory +review" a good number of l
inks now pop up. Quite different from just one year ago, so TwinMOS is slowly but steadily becoming a household name in computer memory.

For those of you that start wondering after all this : Let it be clear that I have no relation to TwinMOS whatsoever except for the manufacturer-client one that is.


Cheers,
ViK

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