DDR3L and Broadcom?

Hi all,

I'm looking into purchasing one of the new generation of Alienwares, and I realized that they use DDR3L's. Question is, if I replace it with a regular DDR3 stick, would it cause any issues or any overheating issues? Since I don't know what Alienware designed their cooling system around, are the heat signatures of regular DDR3 sticks within acceptable range?

Also, Killer 1202 vs the Broadcom 4352... What's better?


Thanks for the input guys!

 

DDR3L only means low voltage, 1.35v vs 1.5v.

 

So can I replace them with regular DDRIII's?

 

Sure... that should be no problem. I think the only reason they are using the "L" crap is because it is more politically correct to use less power. Just a theory that it is based on popularity. It might help a little bit with battery life, too. But, it makes zero sense to me in a high performance beast. People that are concerned about power consumption can buy some anemic little tablet, netbook or ultrabook as part of their plan to "save the planet" LOL.

 

And as for the Broadcom wifi cards... How do they stack up against Killer 1202's? I'm kind of new to the 5th-gen wifi cards haha

 

Atheros/Broadcom/Killer is all the same brand basically. The Killer cards have a few performance tweaks and more robust drivers.

I am an Intel Ultimate-N 6300 WiFi fan. I have a system with a Killer WiFi card in it and I am honestly not impressed by it, nor would I pay anything extra for the brand name. I would recommend choosing whatever 3x3 MIMO or highest speed WiFi card is available. As long as they don't malfunction, keep a solid connection, and run at appropriate wireless N speed, the brand is irrelevant when it comes to something like WiFi. Speed capacity aside, it either works well or it doesn't. Most home routers are incapable of delivering throughput that exceeds the speed of what 3x3 MIMO is capable of delivering.

 

In my experience, the lower end Broadcom wireless adapters are plain crap.

The Killer seem to have an alternate between solid driver and wonky driver, but with a solid version, performance is very good. I'm a fan of Intel's wireless adapter since both drivers and performance has been very stable for me even though peak performance isn't as good as the Killer equivalents from what I've seen.

 

The Broadcom one is the new ac adapter iirc. It suppose to be the same chipset in the new macbook air. Someone need to do some range test on these.

 

well even if its ac,,, being its 2x2 and most ac routers are 3x3 wouldn't that cause some issues?

if some one can find one i have the highest end ac router on the market by asus and id be willing to test the new broadcom chip..

or if its available for purchase ill pick one up.. just need to know where..

I can tell you this tho.. Brother John and my self tested my new router will a killer card and the speeds are insainly fast all ready... he was impressed.. me I was like yea i just wanted the newest and fastest router there was lol
but he new all the technical stuff and taught me alot!

 

It will not cause any issues unless you mix them as far as I'm concerned.

 

mix them as in how luis? mix the new card with a 3x3 ac router? or???

 

Nope, I'm talking about the RAM DDR3L and DDR3.

 

It is probably not a good idea to mix or mismatch any memory modules. I generally like to see all of them matched. That would be especially true with the L modules. It is interesting to see the low power memory being used on the new systems. Unless they perform better than memory that uses the standard 1.5v or greater, I'm not sure I like that conceptually. If there is no difference in real world performance, I suppose it is good to free up some power for overclocking the CPU and GPU(s).

 

As far as we have found the mobile haswells are only officially supporting the 1.35V modules at this time, I don't know if the alienware has bypasses to support it but in other brands some 1.5V modules wont work.

 

Huh... well darn. Having limited options on memory certainly sucks. Sad to hear that. Guess we will need to see some testing to find out if the Alienware laptops can support 1.5v memory. I hope so, because that certainly opens up a lot more options and has a positive influence on memory pricing.

 

Me too, it looks like you have to put effort in to support it though and by default it is not.

 

Hi guys just to confirm, that the new alienware 17 doesn't seem to work when you mix the ram with normal 1600mhz DDR3 1.5v module.

Tried upgrading it yesterday and all i get is a black screen...

 

What if you do not mix them and just use the 1.5 ones, kind of silly if only ddr3l is supported.

 

didnt try all 1.5v yet. But it's kind of silly if normal ddr3 1.5v cant be use

 

Warning:

Do no try to install normal 1.5v DDRIII sticks into haswell mobile systems-

system will not* post!

I wasted $160 on corsair vengeance DDRIII's and the computer will give 4 beeps.


You all have been warned now!

Do you guys know if I came be reimbursed by Newegg because of this incompatibility?

 

Our experience shows some work and some don't. It depends if the sticks can do 1.35v at their stock speeds.

 

So is the new Broadcom that comes with Alienware 18 any good? Has there been any statistical reviews of it? I can't find any and I would like to know how it handles, especially how well its ping is compared to killer cards like the 1103.

 

It is faster the my killer on my R1. I get about 20 Mbps downloads with this new Broadcom versus 8 Mbps with the killer!


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