Companies like Micron are on the JEDEC committee that specifics memory and memory module standards. Mushkin is not on these committees and is not involved in the design and specification of the standards. They do a good job of making "enhanced" modules with specially selected parts and heat sinks for overclockers, but in my professional opinion, their actual design of the module printed circuit boards are marginal, when compared to the best in the industry. If you plug them into your system and they work, that's great. For the iMac, you don't need a Mushkin module. What you need is a Jedec standard SO-DIMM that meets the PC2-5300 standard.
Having been one of the key engineers who has been involved with memory system development for over 10 years, and having trained a large percentage of the engineers in the industry, I have a unique perspective. Micron/Crucial is actively involved in the standardization and design of enterprise quality memory systems, working directly with Intel, AMD, IBM, Dell, Via and other chip, and system developers. Given that they are generally the same cost as other manufacturers, choose them over the others.
Viking is also involved in the memory standardization and design committees. Their designs are not bad. Generally, if a memory house is using the JEDEC standard PCB designs, and high quality memory devices, then they will work well in any system. Some companies like Mushkin, Simpletech and others, try to get smart, diverge from the standards, without ample engineering, and end up developing modules with lots of fast memory that may or may not work in your particular system.
Because my data is important to me, and a single crash can destroy 10's of thousands of dollars of my work, I either use the memory provided by the companies who build my computers (Dell, Appro) or I use Micron/Crucial modules. I just do not have the time to validate some unknown module and supplier. I've taken short cuts in the past, because of expediency when I needed memory, and gotten burnt. I run incredible memory and computation loads on my computers daily, which thrashes memory and stresses the entire system design, and have had marginal memory begin to fail within a year of installation.
If you're still using an older generation computer with DDR DIMM memory (instead of the newer DDR2 DIMM or FBDIMM), then you are most likely running on memory modules using the designs that I did for Micron/Crucial and the JEDEC memory module committee back in the late 90's, early 2000's. These formed the reference designs that all good memory module manufactures used.
Having been one of the key engineers who has been involved with memory system development for over 10 years, and having trained a large percentage of the engineers in the industry, I have a unique perspective. Micron/Crucial is actively involved in the standardization and design of enterprise quality memory systems, working directly with Intel, AMD, IBM, Dell, Via and other chip, and system developers. Given that they are generally the same cost as other manufacturers, choose them over the others.
Viking is also involved in the memory standardization and design committees. Their designs are not bad. Generally, if a memory house is using the JEDEC standard PCB designs, and high quality memory devices, then they will work well in any system. Some companies like Mushkin, Simpletech and others, try to get smart, diverge from the standards, without ample engineering, and end up developing modules with lots of fast memory that may or may not work in your particular system.
Because my data is important to me, and a single crash can destroy 10's of thousands of dollars of my work, I either use the memory provided by the companies who build my computers (Dell, Appro) or I use Micron/Crucial modules. I just do not have the time to validate some unknown module and supplier. I've taken short cuts in the past, because of expediency when I needed memory, and gotten burnt. I run incredible memory and computation loads on my computers daily, which thrashes memory and stresses the entire system design, and have had marginal memory begin to fail within a year of installation.
If you're still using an older generation computer with DDR DIMM memory (instead of the newer DDR2 DIMM or FBDIMM), then you are most likely running on memory modules using the designs that I did for Micron/Crucial and the JEDEC memory module committee back in the late 90's, early 2000's. These formed the reference designs that all good memory module manufactures used.
