Thanks for the memory

There's not much to say about computer memory, other that you need to get the right type and speed for your motherboard. There are two prevailing memory standards these days: DDR2 and DDR3. These are both "Dynamic Memory" because they have to be refreshed every few milliseconds or else their contents will be lost. On the other hand "Static Memory" keeps its contents as long there is power. Static memory would seem like the memory of choice, except that it takes 6 transistors on the integrated circuit to implement a single bit, where as dynamic memory takes merely one transistor and a capacitor. So you see, with dynamic memory, you can get 3 times more memory in the same space.

There are many differences between DDR2 and DDR3, and you can read an interesting article over at neoseeker to find out about them. The most important thing to know is, what type of memory does your motherboard take and what is the speed? The speed is the second number after the DDR specification. The higher the number, the faster the memory. Thus DDR2-1600 is twice as fast as DDR2-800. You can put faster memory in the motherboard than is recommended, but it is a waste of your money. The CPU will only pull data from the memory at the speed that it was designed.

For my HTPC, I picked 4 GB of Corsair memory. I'm not sure why I picked the Corsair, perhaps because the memory had a built in heat sink. (I know, not a very scientific method.)

One final note, DDR memory is always installed in pairs and one should not mix DDR memory sticks from different manufacturers. So, don't expect to cut costs by buying only one. Buy them in pairs, and mate them for life.

There's only one more piece of hardware left to discuss in an HTPC, and that is the video capture card, the thing that turns a HTPC into a DVR, so we'll tackle that next.