Hard Drive And Extra Ram

[(>Zero Cool<)]

I am hoping to add some extra storage space to my pc and some ram. Can anyone suggest what I should go for and where the best place to buy it is. I am looking for 512 ddr ram+ and a fairly large 80 gb + storage device. I am pretty new to the upgrading department so I don&#39;t know if this is pretty straightforward to do or not. :unsure: Any help/advice would be much appreciated. :) Thanks in advance.

p.s. located in the uk

[volskid2002]

try newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com)

[(>Zero Cool<)]

Thanks for the tip but they only ship in the US and Puerto Rico and I am in the UK :( (c the ps in my original post)

Thanks for trying to help though :D

[2nd gen noob]

try looking here (http://www.klboard.ath.cx/bb/index.php?showtopic=32388) for the pinned topic on resources.

i recommend eBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.co.uk) for within the uk

look for a 7200rpm hard drive, preferably with an 8meg cache

the type of ram depends on what you have currently, do you know what speed of ram you have? e.g. 333MHz or PC2700?

[Lamsey]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@18 June 2003 - 18:49
I am hoping to add some extra storage space to my pc and some ram. Can anyone suggest what I should go for and where the best place to buy it is. I am looking for 512 ddr ram+ and a fairly large 80 gb + storage device. I am pretty new to the upgrading department so I don&#39;t know if this is pretty straightforward to do or not. :unsure: Any help/advice would be much appreciated. :) Thanks in advance.

p.s. located in the uk
If you&#39;re anywhere near Glasgow try out Priceless Computing (http://www.pless.co.uk).

[adamp2p]

Yep, 2nd gen is right, we really can&#39;t help ya unless you specify what type of DDR you have. i.e. its frequency and your slots

Make sure you know what type of RAM your mobo will accept before buying it.

[Nightwolf]

http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by Nightwolf@18 June 2003 - 21:20
http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp
i tend to shy away from crucial. the main problem i have with them is that they don&#39;t offer ddr ram with cas latency of 2. the best i can see for my board is 2.5

2.5 may be a bit better than 2 if you want to overclock your ram as fast as possibl, but for operating at standard speeds cas 2 has become pretty much the norm for ddr ram.

i use corsair, but there are quite a few manufacturers now who offer cas 2 ddr at good prices.

of course, whether Zero Cool can utilise cas 2 is dependent on whether he/she has cas 2 ram just now

[velcrom]

I just bought a new hard drive from ebuyer - arrived in three days, cheap as hell, what more do you want :D

[(>Zero Cool<)]

Mornin folks, before I start thanks a lot to all of you for getting back to me :D . This is the part where I start to show just how clueless I am about the Hardware side of things :huh: . I currently have 512 DDRRam (it says on the box 2 slots max memory 1 Gb, dunno if this helps :blink: ) To be honest, as you have probably gathered I have no idea what I am looking for and talking about beyond what I quite fancy having as an end result so if anyone has the patience to talk me through what I should be looking for/at it would be much appreciated. Thanks again to those who got back to me.

p.s. If I go and get something is it simply a case of slapping in the components or do I need to do anything else?

p.p.s Lamsey - I have heard some bad reports about Priceless, have you used them before and do you recommend them?

Cheers :)

[2nd gen noob]

ok, to see if you have any free memory slots, download belarc advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html).
run belarc and under the "installed modules" section in memory, it should tell you if you have any ram slots free.
the most you&#39;ll have free is obviously one, although it&#39;s quite likely you&#39;ll have no free slots.
if you have one free slot then everything is good, you&#39;ll be able to buy another 512MB stick no problems at all.
if you currently have no free slots you&#39;ll have to throw away your current ram and start over again.
run belarc and tell us what it&#39;s saying

[(>Zero Cool<)]

Hiya 2nd gen noob, cheers for the reply :) Ran Belarc and getting

512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot &#39;AO&#39; has 256 MB
Slot &#39;A1&#39; has 256 MB

I take it this means I am up the proverbial creek without so much as a paddle?

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 06:44
Hiya 2nd gen noob, cheers for the reply :) Ran Belarc and getting

512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot &#39;AO&#39; has 256 MB
Slot &#39;A1&#39; has 256 MB

I take it this means I am up the proverbial creek without so much as a paddle?
indeed it does.
basically it&#39;s up to you now, you can either keep what you have just now ram wise, or you can throw away one (or both) of your sticks of ram and buy another (or two).
can you tell us what motherboard and what cpu belarc said you had too please, i forgot to ask last time
thanks

[(>Zero Cool<)]

OK (hope I get the right bits here&#33;)

Processor:
2533 megehertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board
Micro Star international co. ms-6533
Bus clock 133 megahertz

is this what you were asking for? :)

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 06:56
OK (hope I get the right bits here&#33;)

Processor:
2533 megehertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board
Micro Star international co. ms-6533
Bus clock 133 megahertz

is this what you were asking for? :)
yeah, that&#39;s pretty handy

however, you&#39;ll need to decide if you want to keep one stick of ram or buy 2 new sticks.
if you&#39;re going to keep one stick you&#39;ll need to find out what speed of ram you currently have.
the way i check is to look in my bios. to enter your bios, when you reboot your computer, you will see a message saying "press ??? to enter setup"
??? is usually the "del" key. if you hit the proper key in a certain window, you&#39;ll get into your bios. once in your bios, you have to navigate using the arrow keys on your keyboard and the enter key. look for a section called "advanced settings" or "dram timings".
whilst in here, you&#39;re looking for a field called "memory rate" or "memory frequency", something like that.
write down the value for this (it should be something like 133MHz, 166MHz etc)

[(>Zero Cool<)]

If I am going to do the upgrade then I will likely go the whole hog and replace both of them at the same time. I noticed on the box for my pc that it said &#39; 2 modules max memory 1 Gb&#39; I take it this means that I will be ok with 2 x 512 DDR? Can you recommend what to go for?

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 07:39
If I am going to do the upgrade then I will likely go the whole hog and replace both of them at the same time. I noticed on the box for my pc that it said &#39; 2 modules max memory 1 Gb&#39; I take it this means that I will be ok with 2 x 512 DDR? Can you recommend what to go for?
yeah, you&#39;re looking for 2x512MB modules.
the type and speed you get are totally dependent on price.
if you&#39;re just looking for more ram and don&#39;t really mind too much what brand you get, look for 333MHz ram

if you can afford the asking price, i&#39;d recommend corsair ram. here (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=43996) is a 512MB stick of corsair xms2700 ram of cas latency 2.

[(>Zero Cool<)]

That looks good to me, I&#39;ll probably go with that :) . Is that the best place to buy or is it worth shopping around? Sorry to bother you again but any recommendations on extra hard drive space, I&#39;ve you&#39;ve had enough then no probs and thanks very much for all your help. Cheers pal. :D

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 08:03
That looks good to me, I&#39;ll probably go with that :) . Is that the best place to buy or is it worth shopping around? Sorry to bother you again but any recommendations on extra hard drive space, I&#39;ve you&#39;ve had enough then no probs and thanks very much for all your help. Cheers pal. :D
eBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.co.uk) is pretty much the best i&#39;ve found so far.
Dabs (http://www.dabs.com) is worth a try too, but it&#39;s probably just about the same price really.

as for your hard drive, are you thinking of adding a new drive, or replacing your existing drive?

adding a new drive is more of a problem than just replacing one, but if you replace your hard drive, you&#39;ll need to reinstall windows.

the actual mechanics of fitting a new hard drive should be pretty easy. when i installed mine, i never had any problems. basically, all you need to do is to slot your new hard drive into one of your bays in your case (if you replace your current one just put the new one where the old one was).

then you need to connect up what is called an IDE cable (a flat wide cable that goes from your motherboard to the back of the drive. again, if you replace the drive, you&#39;ll be able to tell from the old one where to put it.
you&#39;ll also have to plug in a 4 pin power connector from your power supply unit to the drive (which you&#39;ll again be able to see if you&#39;re replacing). you may have to change a jumper on the back of the drive depending on the default setting, but this is an easy job and can be done in 20 secs with a pair of tweezers.

any new drive should be detected by your computer, and all you&#39;ll need to do is either reinstall windows (if you&#39;re replacing the drive) or format it (if you&#39;re just adding one).

hope this has been of some help to you :)

[(>Zero Cool<)]

It&#39;s been a great help thanks very much for your time and your patience :D Hopefully I can repay the favour sometime in the future. All the best pal, thanks again. :D

[2nd gen noob]

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 08:18
It&#39;s been a great help thanks very much for your time and your patience :D Hopefully I can repay the favour sometime in the future. All the best pal, thanks again. :D
no problem :)

nice to be able to help :D

hope you get on well with your upgrades