Anyone know where to find good RAM sticks?

My HP Pavilion a527x has 512 MB of RAM in it currently (512 in one slot, and the other one has nothing in it). I was thinking of, at least, putting a 1 Gig in the extra slot, and maybe switching out the 512 MB for a 1 Gig.

Anyone know of a good website that has RAM for sale at a decent price? The best I’ve found so far is around $60 for a 1 Gig stick.

After more than 10 years experience in PC hardware, including having my own computer repair lab, I would strongly recommend against "cheap" memory. It can cost a bit more, but I won’t touch anything except Kingston memory. (and yes, I do have Kingston memory in my iBook!)

Quote from: sottwell at Sep 17, 2007, 07:42 PM

After more than 10 years experience in PC hardware, including having my own computer repair lab, I would strongly recommend against "cheap" memory. It can cost a bit more, but I won’t touch anything except Kingston memory. (and yes, I do have Kingston memory in my iBook!)

Sorry about not being too specific in that post. I was meaning getting a high-quality stick of RAM, but trying to get a good deal on it (i.e., finding a site that might have a sale on it or something).

EDIT: Hmm...that’s odd. One website says my model can hold up to 2 Gigs, yet Kingston says it’s only up to 1 Gig.

Kingston is not the only one, I am using Crucial and GSkill and it runs smooth... but sure, cheap memory is a problem waiting to happen, never go cheap on RAM indeed...

Quote from: davidm at Sep 18, 2007, 04:59 AM

Kingston is not the only one, I am using Crucial and GSkill and it runs smooth... but sure, cheap memory is a problem waiting to happen, never go cheap on RAM indeed...

US $119.98 - That’s for two 1 Gig sticks. Damn...that’s freaking awesome (from Crucial). I might look into that. ^.^

Thanks for recommending them.

Kingston is good? I’m not here to bash a ’good’ name but no less than 3 years ago it was total crap. I agree, cheap ram is most likely garbage. Microtech, Samsung, and Infineon make the best chips, who resales them these days is unknown to me. Also having many years experience, I suggest buying a 1gb stick, or matching sticks and keep the 512mb stick in an ESD bag for a rainy day. Mixing memory is a bad idea... not going to go into details

Always test your machine and ram - I suggest these utilities even with your old / current ram;

Prime95 - run it for 48 hours.
memtest86 - if it runs for 4-5 hours with no errors you are probably good.

Happy ram shopping!

@Soshite : Let’s say Macs are picky about RAM and those are recommended : Crucial, Kingston, OWC are safe values and GSkill works OK too !

@fruitwerks : Well, don’t know but I have only good feedback on the web so far, never bought Kingston though...

Macs and laptops are fairly picky. Intel based boards are not so picky, but at the cost of stability. AMD systems are fairly easy going and can work well with even mis-matched sticks. But since this is not a home-brew system, I suggest buying at least double your your current ram. Another key thing to look into is the latency of your current ram. When purchasing your new ram, buy something faster, your mainboard might not handle the new speed, but it will give you better latency - so do your homework on the ram before you buy it. CPUZ will tell you your latency and speed of your current ram. I have noticed marketing tactics like; PC4000 2-2-2, well the 2-2-2 is true @PC2100 speeds, at PC4000 it may actually run something like 3-5-3 so beware! Gskill is rather popular with the OC’ers market. I personally have Samsung chips in all my Systems.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Shop edgetechcorp.com, pcmemorystore.com, memory-up.com, memoryx.net, crucial.com and of course newegg.com.... good luck...