Upgrade RAM or not?

stphnstevey

Hi

I bought a new computer on ebay for £180 and it has an AMD Quad and 2GB RAM. The seller has offered to upgrade the RAM from 2GB to 4GB for an extra £35 - is this a good price?

(confirmed it is DDR3 RAM - motherboard has 2x DDR3 slots and 2x DDR2 slots, so presuming he is swapping the 1GB DDR3 pair for a 2GB DDR3 pair)

I pretty confident in being able to updgrade the RAM myself but I am uncertain of the price. Also with there only being 2x DDR3 slots, if I did it myself I would either have to use the DDR2 slots or have the 2x1GB sticks left over (suppose I could sell them on - any ideas how much?)

fwor

It depends a bit on the spec and whether you value a named brand or not. For example 7dayshop do a "no-name" pair of 2GB DDR3 sticks for £23.98 posted, which doesn't make the offer look good value.

It's also unclear whether you ~need~ more than 2GB for your use. With Vista onwards, it might give slight improvements for some things, but I doubt you'll actually notice it in real life unless you use extremely memory-intensive programs...

stphnstevey

Thanks for that

It only comes with XP, so no Vista RAM drain requirement

The offer of RAM from the seller doesn't specify brand so presume it's unbranded

I will be using it mainly for surfing, downloading music etc, personal photos - thats about it

So guessing 2GB will probably be sufficient?

If I upgrade myself later, guess I could also sell on the 2x 1GB sticks

RussJK

For your needs, you'll almost never need more than 2gb. Most people don't really need more than 3gb. Just watch what programs are set to start up automatically at Windows, and you'll be fine.

fwor

stphnstevey wrote: »

So guessing 2GB will probably be sufficient?

If I upgrade myself later, guess I could also sell on the 2x 1GB sticks

Yes and yes. I use XP occasionally with lots of tasks/tabs and I've never managed to get total memory in use above about three quarters of a Gig, so you should be fine with 2GB.

Hammyman

Even when playing the most memory hungry game I ever had, Battlefield 2, XP only needed 1.5GB and Vista 2GB.

I admit I have 4GB in my Macbook Pro and in this Windows 7 desktop but that is only because I run virtual machines on them.

spakkker

It may have only one 2GB stick in - about £15 for another 2GB stick.

stphnstevey

spakkker wrote: »

It may have only one 2GB stick in - about £15 for another 2GB stick.

Never thought of that - always thought they had to be installed in matching pairs? or is that just matching pairs if 2 installed?

closed

You are unlikely to ever need more than 2GB, or even 1GB given your intended use

Lil306

stphnstevey wrote: »

Never thought of that - always thought they had to be installed in matching pairs? or is that just matching pairs if 2 installed?

You can install DDR3 with two / three modules (dual, triple channel) however I'm sure it can be used as single modules aswell

It's the older memory that needs matching pairs

Save yourself the money. You can buy 4gb of corsair 1600mhz memory for £40 (I bought it when I built my new pc) you're being charged £35 for an extra 2gb ram