Yes airspeed, Crucial sells good stuff-I buy most of mine from them. There is also Viking and Kingston plus several others that are worth looking into. The problem is you will find lots of Sunday newspaper adds and internet adds with "blowout" memory sales. When you ask the reps who the manufacturer is-they usually have no idea. I would stay far away from these "bargains".
Does anybody know what this thing is about ECC and non-ECC RAM? Do I need ECC for trading purposes? If it can correct errors I would say it would be a wise investment. All I know is that you can't combine the two in one machine, so I'd have to throw the old one away. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Grabbit In my opinion you do not need ECC RAM for trading purposes, therefore you will not have to pay the higher prices either. ECC RAM is usually used in high priced servers that handle a lot of load and many networked computers. The fact that you buy non ECC RAM does not mean that your computer will make more errors. However, I would not buy the cheapest RAM either. I found out the hard way that cheap RAM and more expensive RAM usually cannot coexist in the same computer. It still works but it crashes the computer a lot more. I currently have four 256 meg chips of Crucial CAS 2 PC133 RAM in my machine. I first bought two sticks and added them to the mobo along with two different brands of less expensive 128 meg sticks. The computer worked fine I thought until I tried to load Win2K. It would not let me do it for two weeks until I figured it out. It gave me about 40 different errors the most common of which was a memory dump error. I removed the two 128 meg sticks and Win2K loaded the first time without a hitch. Since then I got a piece of software that checks the RAM for me and I confirmed that the cheap 128 meg chips caused problems. So you do not have to buy the most expensive RAM but do not buy the cheapest either, especially if you are trying to add more RAM to an existing computer. If you want to buy additional RAM, either remove what you have and buy the same quality RAM in the quantity you want, or buy the exact same RAM that is already in that machine.
I looked at the specs for my pc at the HP website, it says the type supported of SDRAM memory is 100 MHz. I was told at the store that the 133 MHz would also be fine if it requires 100 MHz, true? The reason I ask is the places I've been have had the 133 and sold out of the 100, also they both are the same price.
JayS Fohat is correct. If its the same price definitely buy the 133. You may own a motherboard in the future that will take advantage of the extra speed.
You can get a lot of information about computer memory from the FAQs at http://www.crucial.com. Link is at top of their home page. This is where I learned such things as the difference between CL2 and CL3, between non-parity and ECC memory, etc. I found the explanations to be clear. Unfortunately, the Qs are not organized, so it can take a while to browse through them to find a specific topic; otherwise, I found them very helpful. fast
Wirehead, Thanks for the clear info. I won't need ECC then, and try to get the same brand or replace it. Fohat and fast, also thanks. As to Megs, my Dell Dimension handbook says only 100 MHz DIMMs are supported. Are you sure I'll be fine with 133 too?
I just paid $14 for a 128meg Micron SDRAM-PC133. WOW! Seems like last month I paid twice that amount... can someone say short MU? 512meg SDRAM was going for $52 each! Fletch