How to buy ram

Level of difficulty: EASY

Having too much of RAM is not a bad thing, as the RAM component is directly responsible for increasing the computer’s performance and speed. Extra RAM helps in gaming, professional computing, resource-heavy works like video and animation editing etc. The effects of having more RAM, to a common person would mean faster programs, less screen freezes and faster interaction with the hard drive partitions. Hence, selecting and buying the adequate amount and nature of RAM is extremely important. There are some particular criteria one might need to consider, before going out to buy ram. This article assumes that buying ram is feasible only for desktop computers, because laptops hardly afford opportunities to facilitate buying extra components, individually.

Materials Needed:
- Purchase
Step 1
The primary consideration is to be made about the intended usage of the computer. As a rule, students, casual users and regular office workers need less ram because of the low demand their nature of work places on the computer. However, on the other hand, software professionals, visual editors, game developers and gamers need more RAM to support their resource-heavy activities. Some modern game titles like ‘Assassin’s Creed’ and ‘Gears of War’ state a particular amount of RAM (usually about 2 GB) as their statutory requirement. Animation software like MAYA, Combustion etc also require RAM upwards of 2GB to even function without screen freezes.
Step 2
Modern operating systems also demand greater portion of the RAM to execute all processes smoothly. Recent Windows operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows Seven need a minimum of 2GB RAM to function properly. On the other hand, people who still use the older, 32-bit version of Windows XP would probably make do with even 1GB of RAM. It is important to note that the 32-bit version of XP doesn’t support RAM over 4GB. Hence, even if more than 4GB of RAM is installed, the computer would still display a maximum up to 4GB.
Step 3
Buying RAM from the market often a tricky proposition. One must consider his OS, the maximum RAM capacity of his motherboard, intended usage etc. if the user already has a certain amount of RAM installed in his system, he should try and source other RAM sticks that might be of the same brand and specifications. Compatibility of RAM is an extremely crucial point, as incompatible RAM could cripple the system and make it slower. Also, one must consider if his/her motherboard needs DDR2 or DDR3 memory, as latest motherboards offer support for DDR3 memory which is faster.