Crucial Technology

I thought of keeping a dedicated computer for streaming and watching movies and that should be near to my AV receiver and considered the below pointsa. The HTPC size should considerably the same size as my AV receiver. When I searchon Internet I come to know that HTPC cases which accommodates miniATX, miniITX mother boards that is suitable for my space.b. Also I have 7.2 Ch home theater system and decided that the mother broad should have 7.1 Ch output with 4 K Video support over HDMI.c. I want to upgrade the RAM later and want 4 DIMM slots.d. If I want to upgrade the storage then I should have option to add internal hard drive inside the case.e. Don't want to over clock the CPU and decided to go with H170 intel chipset motherboard with 1151 socket.f. Front panel USBg. Economical but don't want sacrifice the featuresConsidering all the above I compared Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock and cost and feature that I was expecting I end of choosing the below parts1. Motherboard: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B012N6LM1Y?ref_=pe_584750_33951330This above mother board is a MicroATX board has 4 DIMM slots. This H170 intel chipset with 1151 socket board has HDMI with 7.1 Ch Audio and 4K video support along with 2 more display ports for computer monitor. Totally 3 display support. Doesn't have WIFi and Bluetooth and will not support over clocking.2. Case : http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EMSH9Q?ref_=pe_584750_33951330This case supports MicroATX mother board and comes with 300W FlexATX power supply and one case fan. The case is strong and good quality has space for CD drive and internal hard drives. The power supply cpu connector has only 4 pin, Still it is suitable for the mother board's CPU's 8 pin connector(just plugged in only 4 of 8 pin)3. CPU: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0136JON7M?ref_=pe_584750_33951330The above CPU is Intel's 6th generation processor, Supports gaming and 4K video. This CPU comes with the Intel cooler. I think we no need any third party cooler for my purpose.4. DDR4 RAM: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MMLUYQK?ref_=pe_584750_33951330As per the above mentioned motherboard that supports only DDR4 on 4 slots, better to go with DDR4 which will give faster processing of the application tasks. I bought 8+8 2 DDR4 RAM as above and kept in 2 slots for now, later I can upgrade to another 8+8 DDR4 RAM later when price drops. Mother board manual says there 4 DIMM slots supports up to 64 GB, But the processor manual says it supports 32 GB max. So I decided to stick with 32 GB max.5. SSD M.2:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NY4VIPA?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s04The above SSD is very tiny and go with mother board itself with m.2 connector. For better booting and rebooting and faster application response M.2 SSDs are very good and this is latest compare with SATA/eSATA.6. Operating System - Ubuntu 15 (Linux based)This OS is free and open source. It has nice look and navigation. No need to install any driver software for the above components or motherboard. The OS detects all of them fine. The media player comes with the OS doing great and able to install and play with Kodi and Plex.

Been using it for 3+ months and haven't had any issue with the two 16GB sticks I bought. I had my Optiplex 7040MT mobo working originally with 2x 16GB from another make and put these two and had no compatibility issues to have the full 64GB running.

Who needs their Ram to be flashy and look like you could throw it across the room into the eye of an assassin climbing through your window? Answer - You Don't! It sits upright on the motherboard and your only ever going to see the top of it 99.99% of the time anyway, unless your the type of person who actual takes their computer apart to show your friends each part individually. Since I am not that kind of person this Ram was perfect for me! It's the same great Ram that Crucial makes just missing the aerodynamic qualities of the plastic sheath that allows it be used as mentioned before, but even more important than that is that its cheaper! This kit comes with 4 total sticks, 2 separate boxes each containing a compatible pair of Ram. This means, and I'm sure your going to be putting these onto a motherboard that actually has a minimum of 4 ram slots, that you want to keep the sticks "together". So when I installed these onto my motherboard I opened one box, removed the two sticks and installed them into slots 1 and 2, because that's where the manual that came with my motherboard said to put them. Then I opened the second box and took the other two sticks of Ram and installed them into slots 3 and 4, again because that's what the manual said to do. It is very important to keep the two pairs of Ram "together" on the motherboard because they were tested to be as compatible with each other as possible, within specified parameters, so mixing them up isn't going to do you any favors once they're in the computer. You may have noticed that I kept putting quotations around the word "together" in this review, and that's because not every motherboard is built the same so you need to read the manual that came with it to determine how best to install 4 sticks of Ram on it so that way they stay paired.

I've had a lot of trouble with this RAM after 5 sticks went bad, but I don't really blame them so much as I was having to go through 3 Mobo's before FINALLY getting one that works. Once I did, WUDDA YA KNOW. 5 of my 8 sticks of RAM suddenly won't allow my system to boot.BUT WAIT! Crucial's customer service was EXEMPLARY. SO GOOD they hooked me up with all new sticks and left the door open to swap out the other 3 just in case they weren't 100% compatible with the new sticks.

Great price for the RAM chip, and installation is exactly as you'd expect.Make sure you remember to shut down the computer, unplug everything including the power, install the RAM , and then REMOVE THE BATTERY FROM THE MOTHERBOARD! I personally keep it out for 60 seconds, even though typically 5 seconds is enough time for the capacitors to fully discharge, because I know this made a difference sometimes back in the day.Anyhow, after 10-60 seconds go ahead and put the battery back in.This is important because that battery lets the motherboard remember all the machine addressing for the memory, the processor, the hard drives, etc... and if you don't clear it out it will often be a mixed jumble of addresses from the old configuration and the new. This will lock your computer, and you'll think you've ruined it even though all you have to do is remove the battery for a minute and then restart.Don't click on any restore options or ANYTHING if this happens to you... just shut down again, using the power button if you have to, and then go through the battery removal process I just listed. That will fix the problem pretty much every single time.