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"Advice on buying Ram, in particular brand & features"

Basically I'm after a 256Mb stick. But, should I go with one of the brand names, kingston, crucial or the cheaper generic. Also, is it worth paying the extra for ECC and a lower CL rate (if that makes any sense). Thanks

with most OEM RAM you have no idea of what you are getting regarding timings etc

also the fact that it tends to be crap.
really unreliable/unstable.

Don't get OEM RAM.

Mog, you're right, there is hardly any difference between cheap, OEM RAM and the big brand names, other than price.

Obviously, if you're overclocking, you'll need a better brand - but I doubt you'll be needing that.

Personally, I'd go for some OEM RAM from scan.co.uk. At the moment, for PC3200 DDR, it's under £50 for 512MB. Buy two sticks, shove 'em in Dual Channel and you're set!

im have read that you can go out and buy realy expensive top of the range ram but there is not much difference beetween that and the cheap stuff

im not sure how true that is

You won't go wrong with Crucial.

And unless you're sticking this in a server machine, you shouldn't have to worry about ECC or parity RAM.

I doubt you need ECC ram, low cas latency is a good thing so its worth buying the lowest you can afford. Brand name RAM uses better chips than cheapo generic stuff which is handy when overclocking. I also know that Corsair and Kingston do lifetime warranty on their RAM.

Basically I'm after a 256Mb stick. But, should I go with one of the brand names, kingston, crucial or the cheaper generic. Also, is it worth paying the extra for ECC and a lower CL rate (if that makes any sense). Thanks