All In One HTPC Memory (RAM)

All In One HTPC Memory

Memory is fairly straight forward on a computer. You generally have four things to determine:

  1. Pin Number – the motherboard specs will tell you if you require 168 pin, 184 pin, 240 pin, etc
  2. DDR Type – the motherboard spec will tell you if you require DDR, DDR2, DDR3
  3. DDR Frequency – this is a bit more complicated; generally motherboards will offer a wide range of acceptable frequencies. The higher frequencies that are offered are generally for overclocking applications.
  4. Amount of Ram – 2GB, 4GB, 8GB etc.

NOTE: You’ll see that ram comes in different configurations: (2 x 1GB, 2 x 512MB, 2 x2GB, etc). The first number represents the number of sticks in your packaging. The second number represents the amount of RAM on each stick. Therefore a 2 X 1 GB package will have two sticks of RAM at 1 GB a piece for a total of 2 GBs of RAM.

Again, for continuity sake, I’m going to recommend memory for the AMD APU.

NOTE: AMD APUs responds positively to higher DDR Frequencies. Because RAM Pricing is relatively cheap, I’m going to recommend the DDR3-1866 (PC3-14900), which is the highest supported RAM frequency. I’ll also be recommending 4GB, which should be more than enough for an All In One HTPC Build.

Next we can move on to discussing the video card. If you decided to going with an AMD APU you can skip this section and move on to picking your hard drive.