They’re saying that RAM prices have fallen to the lowest ever and now is a good time to buy. I want some!
Where’s a good place to get high quality RAM, nice & cheap? Where do you recommend?
RAM prices are indeed very low. Less than $0.50/MB. I remember when it cost well over $10.00/MB not so long ago.
For lowest price RAM I would go to Pricewatch.
For good RAM at only slightly higher prices I would buy either Crucial memory or Mushkin memory. Both are very reliable manufacturers (Crucial is a division of Micron). Personally I believe the few extra bucks for the good stuff is worth it but some would debate me on that.
I would definitely buy online rather than from a retail store. The Microcenter near my house sells Micron memory for more than double the price that is available online. Both Mushkin and Crucial have free shipping as well (got my Crucial memory on two days). Crucial also has a slick memory selector on its website to ensure you get memory that is compatible with your system.
FYI: The things that will affect the price:
Overall memory on chip (how many MB)
CAS Latency (usually 3 or 2…lower is better)
Access Time (measured in nanoseconds…very good is 7.5 and it goes up from there…lower is better)
People said ram was cheap a year ago & look at it today! half that price. In a couple months, be even less!
Depends on what kinda of ram though. Rambus is still expensive.
AccessMicro has RAM for dirt cheap. A bunch of different manufacturers, some better known than others. If you decide to go for a somewhat generic company, install it ASAP then run a memory diagnostic. If it shows a bum chip - not incredibly likely, email AccessMicro and ask for an RMA. They’re supposedly pretty good w/ customer service.
Viking supposedly makes pretty good memory, and they’re fairly cheap also.
When PC’s were first introduced, a megabyte of RAM cost about $3000, and came in a shoebox full of IC chips, which no motherboard would accomodate anyhow. Now it’s about 25 cents/MB. Yeah, it’s a good time to buy.
Yeah, I got my memory @ Crucial. They’ve got damn good prices. Perhaps I didn’t shop around enough, but for a 128 meg 133MHz SDRAM chip they had the best price. (Not to mention Free 2nd Day shipping from UPS… [CONUS only :(])
My first RAM purchase was for 4 30-pin 4MB SIMMs and it cost me just shy of $1000.
Fill them slots! A one-gig chip in every socket! No one ever says “Gee, I wish I hadn’t bought so much RAM, I could’ve done with less”.
Thanks, everybody! This was really helpful. Thanks, Jeff_42: I just ordered 192 MB from crucial.com, for $77.38. That comes to a mere 40¢ per MB.
http://www.thechipmerchant.com
Part#: 19610
Information
256 Megabyte 168-pin 3.3 Volt Non-Parity 133MHz SDRAM. For use in a wide variety of desktop computers.
19610.0
$88.00