DDR3 DDR3L and LPDDR3

[kevinchen]

Recently some buyer back to me and say they totally not sure what the memory for the HTPC they purchased. Some buy desktop DDR3 for our HTPC and some buy standard 1.5V laptop DDR3 for i5-4200U and i7-4500U. Some just say they don’t understand the DDR3, DDR3L and LPDDR3 that shows in the CPU descriptions so not sure how to select the right memory.

Now here we collect some information from internet directly and wish they can help.

First, very importantly, you should make sure the exact CPU inside the HTPC you purchase, many seller write only i5 or i7 without other informations, exactly it should be i5-4200U, i7-4500U or other similars. When get the CPU details, you can learn directly from intel.com to check CPU details if you feel the informaiton on the seller’s site not clear enough. You can find the memory types it support directly as shown like this picture:

Now let’s see difference of DDR3, DDR3L and LPDDR3. Laptop memory is 204pin(SO-DIMM DDR 3) and destop memory is 240 pin(DDR 3).

Here is summarization of the key differences(get from synopsys.com)