Part 2 of our continuing series from the TechCast Weekly on Buying the Perfect Computer is all about RAM.  Some people have a hard time understanding what RAM really is, often confusing it as the amount of storage space available on your computer.  The storage space available on your computer is your hard drive, which we’ll discuss later.  RAM is fast memory used by your computer to execute tasks. When your computer runs out of RAM, it starts swapping data to the much slower hard drive, which slows down your entire system.

Here’s how it works:  Your CPU, the processor, needs information to perform an action, let’s say we’re opening up Microsoft Word.  It tells the RAM what it needs to open the program.  The RAM tells the hard drive what information it needs and receives it.  If you have enough RAM in your system, all of that information can then be stored in RAM, which can send information to the CPU much faster than your hard drive can.

The more programs you have open on your computer, the more RAM you use.  And some programs require a great deal of RAM to perform well, like Adobe Photoshop.

Increasing your RAM is the cheapest and easiest way to speed up your computer’s preformance.  But you have to know what type to buy and how much. 

The type of RAM you need is totally dependent on the motherboard in your computer.  Generally you can find out what type RAM your system takes and how much you have in it by either checking the manual that came with your computer (not included with most nowadays) or by checking inside the System Information panel in Windows XP.

But, there’s a faster, more simple way to check. The Crucial Memory Advisor Tool takes the guesswork out of upgrading. Crucial’s free tool will scan your system and tell you everything you need to know.  Then will give you recommendations on the right RAM for your system upgrade.  I highly recommend their products and use them exclusively in my systems. Great performance and reliability.  Don’t buy cheap RAM on get it on eBay.  You never know what you’re going to get when you purchase budget RAM.  Stick with the good stuff.

With RAM being so cheap these days I’d recommend you get at least 512MB. If you’re going to run Windows XP, don’t get less than 512MB or you’ll slow even the fastest CPU powered computer to a crawl.  For XP to perform at it’s best, shoot for 2GB of RAM.  I know that sounds like a lot and if you only do minor tasks like surfing the web and Word documents, 1GB will be more than sufficient.

If you’re one of the brave souls that has already picked up Windows Vista, 2GB is really your starting point.  That 512MB or 1GB that came in your system when you bought it is just not enough.  And you’ll also need to think about purchasing a 3D graphics card for your system, but we’ll talk more about that in another installment.

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