Recommendations for new disk and memory

[Simetrical]

Okay, so I switched from XP to Ubuntu (and am quite happy with it). Unfortunately, I've ended up with very little disk space, so I figure I'll go buy another SATA drive. I'd like it to be fast and large, of course, although it doesn't have to be overboard. I'm thinking 160 GB would be fine for the foreseeable future.

As for memory, I have 1 GB, and while that's usually enough, it's only barely so, and of course the more disk cache the better. I have two 512 MB sticks and two remaining slots, and I was thinking I'd go for another gig. I know that it's faster if they're paired up, but I want to be able to upgrade to 3 GB when necessary, so probably I want a single 1 GB stick. On the other hand, maybe I should just go ahead and futureproof by buying a pair to give me 3 GB. But if I'm doing that, should I go for a 2 GB stick instead? What brands would you recommend?

(Actually I'd like to buy four 2 GB sticks or something, just because I can. 64-bit OSes for the win! But I won't.)

Money isn't a big concern for any of this, but it would be nice if this were kept down to two hundred dollars, maybe three.

[spartan_phalanx]

10k 150GB raptors are on sale @ newegg right now $30 off ($170 and the X is 175). Or two smaller drives in raid for speed and would be cheaper. As for memory what speed do you have now? Getting a new set of memory altogether right now is good because it's so darn cheap.

[Angmar_nite]

RAM is damn cheap nowadays. I bought 1 gb for 75 dollars but if you search they come far cheaper. Mine was two 512 sticks though. But then again, you could always sell your old ram when you want to go above 2gb.

[spartan_phalanx]

Like 2GB's (2x1GB) for $81 plus free shipping.

[Simetrical]

10k 150GB raptors are on sale @ newegg right now $30 off ($170 and the X is 175). Or two smaller drives in raid for speed and would be cheaper. As for memory what speed do you have now? Getting a new set of memory altogether right now is good because it's so darn cheap.

They're DDR PC-3200. I see your point, given spartan_phalanx's post: the hell with it, I'll get two more gigs.

As for hard drives, I only have two SATA ports, and one is in use, so I think I'd prefer to get a single drive. Maybe later I'll get a matching one for RAID, if I feel like it would be useful, but for now I just need the space, not speed. I've gone for a 7200 RPM/8 MB cache instead of the 10k RPM/16 MB cache suggested, at a price of <$60 flat rather than $200 with mail-in rebate.

So here are my picks: hard drive, memory. My computer is this (edit: with options: 3400+ CPU, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD), motherboard specs are here. Does it look like it'll work well? Any last advice?

[spartan_phalanx]

Hold the phone, now that you mention your motherboard that ram won't work. The best you can get is PC3200 if I'm not mistaken. Pre-built systems are much trickier to get ram for. Do you know the manufacturer of your currently installed memory? I'm thinking your better off just adding 1gb to your existing setup. Your looking @ $55 on up from newegg for 1GB.

That hard drive is good. You can more than double your space and Cache by going with the 400GB 16MB Cache Western Digital for $45 more. Either way it's going to be much cheaper overall than you anticipated.

[Freddie]

Okay, so I switched from XP to Ubuntu (and am quite happy with it). Unfortunately, I've ended up with very little disk space, so I figure I'll go buy another SATA drive. I'd like it to be fast and large, of course, although it doesn't have to be overboard. I'm thinking 160 GB would be fine for the foreseeable future.

As for memory, I have 1 GB, and while that's usually enough, it's only barely so, and of course the more disk cache the better. I have two 512 MB sticks and two remaining slots, and I was thinking I'd go for another gig. I know that it's faster if they're paired up, but I want to be able to upgrade to 3 GB when necessary, so probably I want a single 1 GB stick. On the other hand, maybe I should just go ahead and futureproof by buying a pair to give me 3 GB. But if I'm doing that, should I go for a 2 GB stick instead? What brands would you recommend?

(Actually I'd like to buy four 2 GB sticks or something, just because I can. 64-bit OSes for the win! But I won't.)

Money isn't a big concern for any of this, but it would be nice if this were kept down to two hundred dollars, maybe three.

In terms of performances there isn't many games or programmes that need more the 2Gb's of Ram, the idea of stick in a stick of 1 Gb or 2 1 Gb stick (giving you 3 Gb's) is a bad move in my opinion. If you do your memory will not run in dual channel mode and you will see a noticeable drop performance in all applications.

Is your version on Lunix 64 bit? If so get 2x 2Gb's sticks and have 4 Gb's of ram running in dual channel (that's if they do 2 Gb's sticks in PC3200), but if your OS isn't 64 bits forgot it, stick with 2 Gb's and forget about 3 Gb's.

As for the Hard drive as mentioned before the best performance hard drive is the WD Raptor, it's bad value for money but you won’t find a hard drive with better performance (unless you go SCSI). If the WD's are not for you your next bet is to look at 500/750 Gb's HD, performance on larger HD's is better on larger HD's because more data can be stored on the platters, so the head doesn't have to move as much, also it stands to reason that large HD's are newer and there fore more up to date with the latest technology.

[Simetrical]

Hold the phone, now that you mention your motherboard that ram won't work. The best you can get is PC3200 if I'm not mistaken. Pre-built systems are much trickier to get ram for. Do you know the manufacturer of your currently installed memory? I'm thinking your better off just adding 1gb to your existing setup. Your looking @ $55 on up from newegg for 1GB.

Hmm, I was afraid of that. It only supports DDR, I guess, not DDR2? I don't know what company produced my current RAM, it doesn't seem to be marked clearly (without actually taking it out to inspect it, at least). So you'd recommend 1 GB rather than 2 GB? Should it be two sticks of 512 MB or one of 1 GB?

That hard drive is good. You can more than double your space and Cache by going with the 400GB 16MB Cache Western Digital for $45 more. Either way it's going to be much cheaper overall than you anticipated.

Eh, I'm not that fanatical about my computer. I just need more disk space and more memory because I'm actively short on both. I'm not looking for bleeding-edge stuff there.

In terms of performances there isn't many games or programmes that need more the 2Gb's of Ram, the idea of stick in a stick of 1 Gb or 2 1 Gb stick (giving you 3 Gb's) is a bad move in my opinion. If you do your memory will not run in dual channel mode and you will see a noticeable drop performance in all applications.

What are the prerequisites for running dual channel, exactly? The two existing sticks are presumably identical, and they're in the two blue-colored banks, so I assume they're running dual-channel. But it's "dual" channel, so does it matter if I put different memory in a different pair of banks?

As for the Hard drive as mentioned before the best performance hard drive is the WD Raptor, it's bad value for money but you won’t find a hard drive with better performance (unless you go SCSI). If the WD's are not for you your next bet is to look at 500/750 Gb's HD, performance on larger HD's is better on larger HD's because more data can be stored on the platters, so the head doesn't have to move as much, also it stands to reason that large HD's are newer and there fore more up to date with the latest technology.

As I said, I don't care much about bleeding-edge technology. I'll note that it's definitely not true that bigger is always better: there are tradeoffs in bigger drives. Bigger drives means, to some extent, bigger disks and lower RPM. You notice that both the 800+ GB drives on newegg.com are 7200 RPM (seek time 8.5 ms, latency 4.17 ms), while the largest 15K RPM drives are 147 GB and most are under 40 GB (seek time 3.3 ms, latency 2 ms; yes I know those are SCSI, the point still holds). Also, bigger tends to mean more noise, power use, and heat. But that's irrelevant to me, either way.

[spartan_phalanx]

Yes it supports DDR SDRAM 184-Pin, not the 184-Pin RDRAM.

From a cost point you can just add 1GB, but sometimes two different brands of memory can cause problems. The safest bet would be to get 2GB's (2x1GB match pair). Then either ditch the old ones or try putting them in as well. You have 4 banks so they might work together. This would give 3GB's total if they work together.

Different memory is manufactured to run at different timings even when within the same class (PC3200). This can cause stability problems when run all together. Unless someone has reported either way you would have to try it and see.

[Freddie]

What are the prerequisites for running dual channel, exactly? The two existing sticks are presumably identical, and they're in the two blue-colored banks, so I assume they're running dual-channel. But it's "dual" channel, so does it matter if I put different memory in a different pair of banks?

If you put in another pair of matching dimms without taking out the exisitng memory I'm sure you will lose dual channel.

As I said, I don't care much about bleeding-edge technology. I'll note that it's definitely not true that bigger is always better: there are tradeoffs in bigger drives. Bigger drives means, to some extent, bigger disks and lower RPM. You notice that both the 800+ GB drives on newegg.com are 7200 RPM (seek time 8.5 ms, latency 4.17 ms), while the largest 15K RPM drives are 147 GB and most are under 40 GB (seek time 3.3 ms, latency 2 ms; yes I know those are SCSI, the point still holds). Also, bigger tends to mean more noise, power use, and heat. But that's irrelevant to me, either way.

And as I said 'unless you go SCSI' which for most people its out of their price range and represents poor value for money (although thats in the eye of the beholder). However if outright preformance is more important then by all means go SCSI........but invest in accounstic padding to damppen the noise! 15K RPM!

The hard drive that you are going to get is decent enough, SATA 2, 2 platter. The preformacne of that hard drive is near the same as 90% 7200 rpm hard drives on the market today.

[Simetrical]

If you put in another pair of matching dimms without taking out the exisitng memory I'm sure you will lose dual channel.

Quoting a paper by Intel on Kingston's website:

For the best dual-channel memory performance on motherboards with the Intel dual-channel DDR chipsets, you must use identically paired memory modules in DIMM sockets 0 of channel A and B. Identically paired memory modules must also be used when populating DIMM sockets 1 of channel A and B. One can, for example, plug in matching 256MB DIMMs in both DIMM 0 slots, and plug in matching 512MB DIMMs in both DIMM 1 slots.

Note the last sentence. Presumably the same applies to AMD's equivalent.

Currently I'm most interested in whether the memory I pointed out will actually work on my motherboard. It should, right?

[Freddie]

Quoting a paper by Intel on Kingston's website:

For the best dual-channel memory performance on motherboards with the Intel dual-channel DDR chipsets, you must use identically paired memory modules in DIMM sockets 0 of channel A and B. Identically paired memory modules must also be used when populating DIMM sockets 1 of channel A and B. One can, for example, plug in matching 256MB DIMMs in both DIMM 0 slots, and plug in matching 512MB DIMMs in both DIMM 1 slots.

Note the last sentence. Presumably the same applies to AMD's equivalent.

Currently I'm most interested in whether the memory I pointed out will actually work on my motherboard. It should, right?

Well it looks like as long as your have matching pairs running in the same channel you should be alright, although having the same speed and make of ram would help keep performance more even i.e. avoid bottle necking.

The ram you have selected should work fine on your motherboard, however to make 100% sure use the Crucial memory advisor. It's a very help tool that helps you select memory that is compatible with your motherboard.

That's not true.

Larger HD models from the same brand and series use the same platters.
They use either more platters or utilize a larger portion of each platter, or a combination of the two.

Sometimes a smaller disk in the series is faster than a large one.
Although you are right that, generally speaking, the larger models are often faster than the smaller models.
Only a benchmark can really tell you which the fastest is.

Well I stand by what I said; a 7200 RPM hard drive from the same manufacturer is generally faster then the previous smaller version. Check the reviews of the new 1 Tb hard drive and you see that they perform a little bit better then the 500 Gb's model.

[Erik]

Hmm, I was afraid of that. It only supports DDR, I guess, not DDR2?

Correct.

What are the prerequisites for running dual channel, exactly? The two existing sticks are presumably identical, and they're in the two blue-colored banks, so I assume they're running dual-channel. But it's "dual" channel, so does it matter if I put different memory in a different pair of banks?

Dual channel works with two different pairs, yes.
Just as long as each pair consists of two identical sticks.

performance on larger HD's is better on larger HD's because more data can be stored on the platters, so the head doesn't have to move as much

That's not true.

Larger HD models from the same brand and series use the same platters.
They use either more platters or utilize a larger portion of each platter, or a combination of the two.

Sometimes a smaller disk in the series is faster than a large one.
Although you are right that, generally speaking, the larger models are often faster than the smaller models.
Only a benchmark can really tell you which the fastest is.

[Simetrical]

Okay, so here are my new choices: hard drive, memory. My computer is this (with options: 3400+ CPU, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD), motherboard specs are here. Should that work? If so, I'll order tonight.

[Simetrical]

Okay, everyone, thanks. I've ordered now.