We need to buy some memory for some servers. I have three quotes in total. One for memory from dell, one for Kingston memory and one for Crucial/Micron memory.
The one for crucial memory and Kingston memory are half the price as the same memory from Dell.
I inquired with Dell why their memory is 2x more expensive than alternatives and the answer I got back was that:
"Dell memory is more expensive as it is tier-1 OEM grade, which is a much higher quality grade of RAM. The warranty for Dell memory also goes through Dell tech support."
The warranty part totally makes sense to me - I get that purchasing through Dell means I get 4 hour turnaround time on replacement memory.
However, what is "Tier-1 OEM grade memory"? Is there such a thing? And if there is - is it a "much higher quality" of memory? Or is this all a lot of malarkey to justify charging twice as much?
I can't find much about tier one OEM grade memory so I'm inclined to think this is nonsensical double speak but I'm wondering if they know something I don't.
If you pay for support on your servers then only buy memory that that support organisation supports - otherwise they may well refuse you support if they realise the servers have non-supported components. Generally speaking serverfault is for pro-sysadmins who inherently build and maintain supportable , production-grade, platforms - so things like supportability is key to us, your situation may differ and the value of the savings that can be had might outweigh the supportability benefits.