So whats the verdict guys? Crucial? Kingston? OWC? Transcend? I am currently returning my bad memory that ruined my day.
The verdict is that you need to decide if paying a bit more is worth it to you. Nobody can make that decision for you. What I can say is this is my experience:
Crucial is $116
USD for PC3-12800 CL=11 ram (16 GB) direct from Crucial.com
I paid $138 for PC3-12800 CL=9 ram (Hyper X) from Amazon.com, and bought 32 gigs.
Both had free shipping, but I'm an Amazon Prime member so the free shipping is two days. The free shipping from Crucial is 5-7 days, another $18 for 2 day shipping.
The speed difference is nearly nothing, but I figured the small price difference was insignificant in the big scheme of the computer price, so I bought the Hyper X ram.
I just ran Geekbench and got 13098 for 32-bit (didn't buy it) and on the
Primate Labs site, they show a late 2012 27" iMac with Intel Core i7-3770 3400 MHz (4 cores) getting a 12877 score. That's less than a 2% difference -- nearly nothing.
This was all a very long way of saying that there's no clear cut "best" -- Crucial, OWC and Hyper X have all been used with excellent results.