Those were the popular chips when 256MB modules were normal and 512MB for deeper pockets, so you're looking for the wrong thing if you want 1GB modules.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-21, 23:45:

Those were the popular chips when 256MB modules were normal and 512MB for deeper pockets, so you're looking for the wrong thing if you want 1GB modules.

I'm not specifically looking for 1gb modules, 512 are ok. I'm reading an old topic about those memories and it's impressive how you just find ddr400 cl3 nowadays while back in the past they also made premium ddr like: GeIL ONE TCCD (S), G.Skill FF even rated to ddr 600.

They were overvolted to just short of glowing though so unless your board supports high DIMM voltage they won't go that fast.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-21, 23:50:

They were overvolted to just short of glowing though so unless your board supports high DIMM voltage they won't go that fast.

TCCD memories are able to reach high frequencies with less than 3 volts, other story for winbond chips...

the original DDR modules you are better looking for 128Mb and 256Mb sticks.
They were cheap but still expensive. 512Mb sticks were not common.

By "High end" RAM I take it you mean the likes of Geil?
If so the reason you are struggling is there was so little, if any, of it back then.

High end was Samsung, bare chips. Rare to find a factory fitted heatsink because it didnt need it.

It wasnt until PC2700 you started to get what you would recognise as "high end" RAM. Which isnt the original DDR as there was PC1600, PC2100 and then PC2700, ending in PC3200.

I have had a build up of DDR over the last few years, seem to get a 2" stack free with any box or lot of more interesting stuff, and I had barely looked at any of it. So I riffled through about 150+ sticks of 256 and a few 512s, and nothing stood out. Lots of micron and infineon for some reason, but then the rest was a mishmash of 3rd tier and unknowns, probably remarked chips. There was a mere smattering of Samsung, but old PC2100 era stuff like TCB0. Not a single winbond. So on a percentage basis of random lots of DDR, it looks low. However, as it got famous for overclocking it could have been cherry picked at factory, in channel, at retail and then again in the used market.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2026-05-21, 23:39:

Do the collectors have squirelled them away from the market completely?

Not necessarily all, but it's much harder to find one now due to indexing. Before DDR4 3200 was a thing you could type out something like "Kingston DDR 3200" and get some decent results.

Doesn't help that keyword search is dead and basically it is "imagine what I said, imagine what I meant, imagine an answer and imagine some corps paid you more to have their results on first page." on google now.

I don't know if this is the old reference you found, but might give you some more options...
https://forum.overclock3d.net/threads/rams-handbook.15447/
The later DRAMs will probably be on the bigger modules.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-22, 04:59:

I don't know if this is the old reference you found, but might give you some more options...
https://forum.overclock3d.net/threads/rams-handbook.15447/
The later DRAMs will probably be on the bigger modules.

Thanks that's new to me, I am going to give a look.
Still the problem remains, I'm aware of the different chips, there is huge topic in a german community with tests of the main chips.
I just wonder why the online markets are full of premium memories starting from the ddr2 and newer but the 1 seem completely gone.

You'll have to rely on more vague listings where the seller has no idea how to properly identify the item. An opportunity to stock up even on Samsung TCCD is long gone. I had some luck with BH5 in late 2010s only because I searched through a lot of generic Kingston memory listings.

Kingston definitely had a TCCC value RAM, I don't know if they moved on to TCCD chips later. But pre-binned RAM with the spreaders on, nobody probably calling out the chips now, have to look up by name Hyper X or whatever. But yes, to later sellers, it's just RAM, with low capacity DDR being nearly worthless, nobody bothers taking pics clear enough to see the chips, or reading them.

If you look around some of the old DDR performance threads, guys were only expecting 2 or 3 years out of their RAM at elevated voltages. So that could be a possibility as to what has happened to a lot of it, burned up in use.

Best chance of finding it is in gaming themed prebuilts of the era, complete systems, I think, where it might not have been overclocked even, just sold as "the best" to go in the high end gaming rig. Or you could place wanted ads on all the overclocking forums with a classified section that have existed since those years.

However, high performance, overclocker or gamer memory, only existed as a thing commercially through about the last third of the DDR era. Like blowholes, rolled cables, watercooling etc, enthusiasts were talking it up and figuring it out themselves a good year or so before commercial products. So for the first year, enthusiasts in small numbers were able to jump all over a possibly very minor supply of "good" parts, in whole global RAM market terms, as they personally tested and qualified them. Anyway, what I am trying to point out is something that was a sliver of the end of the DDR market, was a much bigger thing throughout the whole run of the DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 etc markets. So whatever is out there, presuming it survived in the same proportion as DDR2 enthusiast memory, is still going to be a faint whisper drowned in the yelling of DDR2 up.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-22, 15:40:

However, high performance, overclocker or gamer memory, only existed as a thing commercially through about the last third of the DDR era. Like blowholes, rolled cables, watercooling etc, enthusiasts were talking it up and figuring it out themselves a good year or so before commercial products. So for the first year, enthusiasts in small numbers were able to jump all over a possibly very minor supply of "good" parts, in whole global RAM market terms, as they personally tested and qualified them. Anyway, what I am trying to point out is something that was a sliver of the end of the DDR market, was a much bigger thing throughout the whole run of the DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 etc markets. So whatever is out there, presuming it survived in the same proportion as DDR2 enthusiast memory, is still going to be a faint whisper drowned in the yelling of DDR2 up.

I have a small stack of pc150/pc166 engraved sdram from king max and others that came to ensure a high level of stability in business/industrial systems for god only knows what reason.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2026-05-21, 23:39:

I keep watching on ebay and some others local auction websites of different countries but it seems impossible to find any premium ddr memory using TCCD or Winbond BH5 chips, while the premium DDR2 and 3 seems pretty common...
Do the collectors have squirelled them away from the market completely?

Any help about where I could find them would be useful.

I'm squirren, I'm hoardin. I got lucky and found a small mom and pop computer store deep in the neighbourhoods that was closing down. The owner had a shoebox of RAM he'd been pulling from machines throughout the years, and tried to sell some of them, but like others say, there wasn't a large enthusiast crowd in that era so doubtfully anyone bought these for performance reasons. So over the years the shoebox grew to many sticks and a varieties of chips, and now it's a treasure box with multiple samples in a variety of series', with lots of weird, unique brands like cool looking Matrix branded chips. It seems that according to my notes, the best ones I've found so far are TCCC 230MHz 2.5-3-3-6 @ 2.8V, but my favourite is this fugly 1GB stick with a doubly stacked chips on both sides. Sure is oogly.

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-05-23, 00:01:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-22, 15:40:

However, high performance, overclocker or gamer memory, only existed as a thing commercially through about the last third of the DDR era. Like blowholes, rolled cables, watercooling etc, enthusiasts were talking it up and figuring it out themselves a good year or so before commercial products. So for the first year, enthusiasts in small numbers were able to jump all over a possibly very minor supply of "good" parts, in whole global RAM market terms, as they personally tested and qualified them. Anyway, what I am trying to point out is something that was a sliver of the end of the DDR market, was a much bigger thing throughout the whole run of the DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 etc markets. So whatever is out there, presuming it survived in the same proportion as DDR2 enthusiast memory, is still going to be a faint whisper drowned in the yelling of DDR2 up.

I have a small stack of pc150/pc166 engraved sdram from king max and others that came to ensure a high level of stability in business/industrial systems for god only knows what reason.

That was happening almost concurrently with fast DDR as customers rejected RAMBUS in favor of keeping SDRAM on life support because Intel didn't have a DDR chipset. They had put all their eggs in the RAMBUS basket. Meanwhile commercial customers were getting nervous as RAMBUS were sending threatening letters to large USERS of DDR as well as suing everybody else in the RAM foundry business. So faster SDRAM specs appeared. What was also happening was JEDEC was kind of dropping the ball, they had already flubbed the licensing of the PC100 mark on PC100 modules that couldn't meet total module timing with 10ns chips on, because there was another half ns or so begging. Then PC133 came out unofficially, and sensible makers were doing it with 7ns chips to meet total timing, the cheapass bottom feeders were rebinning and remarking 8ns, but JEDEC somehow dragged their feet for another year, and again hid the module timing overhead, from inductance, capacitance and path length in the spec and said 7.5ns in big letters, whereupon chips were being binned at 7.5 now, some of which only made PC100 at 8ns before, and those modules in server cabinets and racks went real flaky when the temperatures climbed past 60 C or so. So yah, the extended specs coming out with provisional 150/166 markings would have been popular just to ensure it could at least do PC133 properly.

Was a wild time, had big corp sysadmins reading The Register daily just to find out whether their RAM was legal or not today. JEDEC was probably super distracted, getting it from all sides, members who were being sued, ex members who were doing the suing, customers and system integrators screaming at them, then Via brings out KT333 and people are fussing about when is PC2700 getting ratified.

bartonxp wrote on 2026-05-23, 01:28:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2026-05-21, 23:39:

I keep watching on ebay and some others local auction websites of different countries but it seems impossible to find any premium ddr memory using TCCD or Winbond BH5 chips, while the premium DDR2 and 3 seems pretty common...
Do the collectors have squirelled them away from the market completely?

Any help about where I could find them would be useful.

I'm squirren, I'm hoardin. I got lucky and found a small mom and pop computer store deep in the neighbourhoods that was closing down. The owner had a shoebox of RAM he'd been pulling from machines throughout the years, and tried to sell some of them, but like others say, there wasn't a large enthusiast crowd in that era so doubtfully anyone bought these for performance reasons. So over the years the shoebox grew to many sticks and a varieties of chips, and now it's a treasure box with multiple samples in a variety of series', with lots of weird, unique brands like cool looking Matrix branded chips. It seems that according to my notes, the best ones I've found so far are TCCC 230MHz 2.5-3-3-6 @ 2.8V, but my favourite is this fugly 1GB stick with a doubly stacked chips on both sides. Sure is oogly.

Yeah small computer shops closing down are very juicy occasions, too bad there aren't much down there and still they wouldn't have so old things... the oldest they had when I went to ask it was a oem pentium 4 and it was 5 years ago.

Search ebay for Infineon HYS64D32309GU-6-A. It has Infineon AT-6 ram. It is winbond BH-5 ram. It will do 250fsb at 2-2-2-5 at 3.3v.

supercordo wrote on Yesterday, 01:50:

Search ebay for Infineon HYS64D32309GU-6-A. It has Infineon AT-6 ram. It is winbond BH-5 ram. It will do 250fsb at 2-2-2-5 at 3.3v.

3.3v is too much and would not last long, some suggested that all bh5 modules in the world were dead years ago.

Winbond BH5 is rated to work at 3.3v. The only issue is heat.