Which RAM is best?
 

OK-I need to get more ram, I need it cheap but good. 512 is good, but 1 gig is better. Which is the best brand? I am planning on purchasing from Newegg.

There are only a few manufacturers of the actual chips, so look for a sale. I bought 2 1GB DIMMS from BestBuy last year for $107 each. Make sure it has the same speed as what's already in your machine.

kalabanta:

Do you mean DDR or DDR2?

I need 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 533 (PC2 4200)

OCZ is the best but it is not listed. Though I prefer using ECC memory when planning on reaching a gigabyte or more of RAM.

If you want the best, you have to spend the money. If you are not going to over clock, forget buying the best. I suggest buy the best name brand memory at being reliable, stable, and compatible with majority of motherboards. Either Crucial or Kingston.

IMHO, Corsair memory are overly price.

So I should go with Crucial or Kingston? I am not planning on overclocking as I have a Pentium Celeron D 3.33GHz, I like it but have heard bad things about over-clocked Pentiums.

Also, is Seagate the way to go in hard drives?

I bought a ton of Wintec DDR400 512mb sticks... For $32 each on a mad sale at newegg.com about a year back. So far - all good.
I can get em up to 440mhz without becoming unstable... My socket 754 Sempron 64 3400+ gives in earlier so overclocking memory is not much use to me. Good value memory though.

So you recommend Wintec then?

New? I say stay away from WD.
From a few years back Quantum were the best and the successive Maxtor models which were rebranded Quantum models were just as good. New stuff...? Um... I wont buy it.
I'm happy with the SATA Seagate Baraccuda drives I got... They aren't super fast but quiet and reliable.
Hitachi is supposed to be super good but they also cost super much.
So assuming you are looking for value hardware, Seagate is a safe bet.
*EDIT*
I also have good experience with Samsung drives.

Whatever works on your mobo and whatever is cheaper.
It either works or it doesn't.
I've only heard of compatibility problems on ECS mobos.
I have a Gigabyte K8 series mobo with nForce 4 chipset and they work great. Works great on Dell Dimension 3000 mobo with some intel 900series chipset.

I like the price of Wintec-as well as the heat spreading devices...I think I'll try it.

Hows this look? (As far as stability and efficiency)

Looks good... I haven't had a machine with DDR2 yet.
Good price too.
The reviews for Wintec memory are consistent for all products as you can see here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tec+Industries

I think it's really hard to make any recommendations. I see someone advises against WD - but I've been running WD SATAs for a year now and not only are they reliable and quiet (so far), they are actually faster than my Samsung and Seagate SATA discs. I see so many contradictory statements about such things that the "right choice" probably depends on the rest of your hardware and the uses to which it is put. No absolutes.

As for DDR2, I'm a great fan of Corsair but they tend to be more expensive. And if you're not interested in overclocking, there may be better choices to make.

I suggest you google for some benchmarks - they will give you way more detail than you could ever expect to get from posting on this forum.