RAM for HTPC
How Much RAM
According to the Microsoft website, the minimum amount of RAM for High Definition Content is 512mb. However if you are going to watch High Def content, I would recommend at least 1gb of RAM minimum, as some of this will be used by background processes and the Operating System on your computer.
Although 1gb of RAM will work, your system may feel sluggish. 2gb of RAM would feel a lot more responsive, and will allow you to switch between applications quickly. More RAM will also be beneficial for your computer when processing Blu Ray DVD’s. The operating system you are using may also require more Ram. For example windows vista is known to be quite sluggish and may have stuttering when playing HD content with less than 2gb of RAM, while many linux distributions are known to be less resource hungry, so require less RAM to run.
If you are buying a new system, RAM is quite cheap these days, so you might as well buy 2gb worth of it and reap the benefits of a faster, more responsive computer.
What Speed
Most RAM today is DDR2 RAM. Although DDR3 RAM is available it is very expensive and the speed increase is only marginal for the price. So this article will mainly discuss DDR2 RAM.
DDR2 RAM comes in three speeds, 667Mhz, 800Mhz, and 1066Mhz. For most home theatre PC systems 667mhz RAM will be adequate. The main benefit of faster RAM is for overclocking, which should not be done on a HTPC as it will produce more heat and noise.
However some integrated graphics chipsets (for example the 780g) benefit from 800mhz RAM., as they will respond better to the faster memory. The price difference between 667mhz RAM and 800mhz RAM is often only a few dollars, so you might as well get the faster RAM.
1066Mhz RAM is usually very expensive and generally has no benefits unless you are doing major overclocking on high end CPUs, which as mentioned before is not advisable on a HTPC.
RAM also has timings, for example 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12. For these timings the lower the numbers mean the RAM has tighter timings, so it is better. However I wouldn’t worry too much about this, as the difference between timings is negligible when it comes to performance of your HTPC.
Which Company
In the past many people had lots of problems with generic RAM, but times have changed and these days generic RAM is just as good as brand name. I use generic RAM in all of my personal computers, as I don’t see the point in paying for brand names. Extensive benchmarks have been done on this topic, and very little difference has been shown between standard and high end RAM.
However sometimes the price for brand named RAM is very similar to generic RAM, depending on where you shop. Good brand names for RAM are: Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ and G.Skill. My favourite brands of generic memory are ADATA, Super Talent, Apacer and Transcend.
Other Concerns
You will need a 64 bit operating system if you want to use 4gb of RAM. A 32 bit operating system will only be able to address 4gb of system memory total, so if you have a 4gb of RAM and a 512mb graphics, then you will only see 3.5GB out of the 4GB total RAM.
Also when buying RAM always buy it in 2 separate sticks. So for example if you are buying 2gb of ram, then buy 2 x 1gb sticks rather than a single 2gb stick. This allows you to run the RAM in dual channel, so you can get the full speed out of your memory.
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