Looking to upgrade my RAM - Crucial or kingston?

Hi, i need some more RAM as the title says.....

it's to go in my Dell dimension E521desktop which currently has 1gig [2x512mb] of ddr2 533mhz, AMD Athlon 64x2 Photoshop cs2 and lightroom run ok on this but with a lot of layers open it does slow down quite a bit, hence i'm looking to get some more RAM.

So, can anyone tell me if there is a preferred manufacturer?

everyone loves a poll, so get voting and help me pick.....

Crucial or Kingston??

Without knowing your exact application I can say that Crucial is more respected and at the ultra-high end (and servers) it outperforms Kingston. That being said you can usually get Kingston much cheaper through online vendors such as TigerDirect.com. If you buy Crucial, I would buy direct from their web site...they ship quick and offer great warranties and help pre-and post sale.

Been buying Kingston for years with no complaints or issues.

RickDavisFL wrote in post #4283844
Without knowing your exact application I can say that Crucial is more respected and at the ultra-high end (and servers) it outperforms Kingston. That being said you can usually get Kingston much cheaper through online vendors such as TigerDirect.com. If you buy Crucial, I would buy direct from their web site...they ship quick and offer great warranties and help pre-and post sale.

Thanks for the reply, i've updated my og post with some extra info:

Thanks again.....

I just got a very good price directly from Kingston on some older style 1MB DDR (not DDR2) RAM modules. Their price blew away the normal vendors I have used for memory.

My understanding is memory, of the same specs, is the same. I go for the cheapest, which you can find at NEWEGG:http://www.newegg.com …x?Category=17&n​ame=Memory

Memory "of the same spec" is like a Canon 200mm compared with a Quantaray 200mm, it's similar on paper but that's where it ends. I know this is a dramatic comparison but it's the best way I can think of to illustrate my point. Although with good manufacturers the differences are subtle and sometimes may not be seen at all.

That being said, whatever brand you get I would suggest you buy 1GB sticks in pairs and install them starting at slot 1. If you have extra open slots at the end move your 512mb sticks to the next available slots after you install all the higher capacity sticks. Depending on how many slots you have and your budget, you could buy sets of 1GB sticks or 2GB sticks.

I generally recommend a minimum of 1GB of RAM per core, per CPU, and then increase this in pairs. This may be overkill for your particular system but it would be the best possible upgrade plan regardless on the amount of RAM you add.

Hope this helps.

Oh, I forgot the most important part. Read the manual of the motherboard and make sure it will support the RAM you are adding. Make sure you look at the maximum RAM it can hold as well as the speed it can use.

Also, different operating systems can limit the amount of RAM that can be "seen" by the computer. This is usually not an issue until you go past 8-16GB of RAM though.

Hope this helps.

Kingston is the major player in the market. They make pretty much all the RAM that's rebadged as HP, Apple, Toshiba etc. Brand wise it's definately better, but in practice I doubt you'll find any difference.

That's true, Kingston does get plenty of business from the assembly line computer makers although most of the "tech geeks", myself included, will probably point you to Crucial. However, unless you have something custom, modified, over clocked or are using a server you can probably just take whatever is the best price.

I was pointed to crucial by a lot of people, and bought two 1gb sticks from them. No complaints so far.

Thanks Rick, that was all very useful..... thank you

I'll probably go with crucial even though the poll currently has Kingston ahead, as i know nothing about these things i just wanted to make sure there was no real downside with either brand, and as there seems to be little in it i'm happy to plump for either

thanks again to everyone that chimed in with their experience......

G.Skill, Corsair or Patriot, but (no offense) since it's nothing special, just get whatevers cheapest.

Yeah, since you are not using something dramatically custom or advanced you can safely go with whatever is within your budget and cheapest to get.

If anything, this topic has shown that no one really has anything bad to say about either vendor.

Happy upgrading!

I always buy a known brand and what ever is cheapest after shopping around ... never had a single memory problem. Crucial and Kingston are both respected ... but so is lots of other stuff.