Thread: Which RAM? :(
View Single Post
Torkell

Stealth Admin

Joined: Jul 2004

Posts: 2,153

Torkell is a forum legendTorkell is a forum legendTorkell is a forum legend

Nov 24, 2004, 11:08 AM
Torkell is offline
Reply With Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by R3ptile
Don't listen to the people on this board, most of them don't know anything about hardware, the others are just fanboys.

That memory your cousin recommended you (Corsair Value Select Dual Channel 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory 512 X 2) seems to be good as long as you don't plan overclock. (Value memories are not that good for overclocking as far as I know...)
*bops you over the head with an old Netgear network card*
You were saying about people not knowing about hardware?


On the subject of memory, PC133 a bit old now. The 133 refers to the clock speed of the memory, in this case 133MHz. It won't work in the system you picked out, as it's too slow. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Dual channel is basically a fancy thing where (IIRC) instead of using one stick of ram before the other, it uses both in parallel (giving extra performance). To use dual channel memory you usually need a matched pair of memory sticks, which most companies sell. The memory you've picked out is dual channel, and so will work nicely with your board.

DDR is another fancy thing where it transfers double the data with the same clock speed. The technical details aren't important, and almost all memory now uses DDR.

I wouldn't attempt to overclock your computer unless you know what you're doing. Usually, overclocking stuff will invalidate the warranty, and if you take it too high you can do nasty stuff to expensive bits (like destroying the innards of the processor). If you do decide to overclock, then so it in small steps and watch the temperature of whatever you're overclocking. Generally, 30-50 C is fine, hotter may cause problems like random crashes or errors. Even hotter (over 100 C) can destroy chips.

As far as sites go, you could also try http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ http://www.ebuyer.com/ or http://www.dabs.com/ - overclockers tends to be good value, tho it's probably not much good if you don't live in the UK. Both dabs and ebuyer have UK and US sites.

The rest of the spec looks alright, but a 300w power supply is a bit light now. It'd be worth looking at getting a 430w one, especially if you plan to add lots of hardware (disks, optical drives, processors, graphics cards all eat power now).
__________________
-- Torkell