Question about RAM prices

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ddcc

I'm looking for DDR SDRAM Non-ECC at PC2100 or above in 512mb sticks.
As a student, I have a limited budget, and I've tried looking up ebay,
newegg, fry's, and everywhere else, but I can't seem to find a stick
anywhere below $30 that passes memtest86+. Any websites that have cheap and
reliable RAM?
 
ddcc said:
I'm looking for DDR SDRAM Non-ECC at PC2100 or above in 512mb sticks.
As a student, I have a limited budget, and I've tried looking up ebay,
newegg, fry's, and everywhere else, but I can't seem to find a stick
anywhere below $30 that passes memtest86+. Any websites that have cheap and
reliable RAM?
Click to expand...

How much/year does your college cost you?
 
ddcc said:
I'm looking for DDR SDRAM Non-ECC at PC2100 or above in 512mb sticks.
As a student, I have a limited budget, and I've tried looking up ebay,
newegg, fry's, and everywhere else, but I can't seem to find a stick
anywhere below $30 that passes memtest86+. Any websites that have cheapand
reliable RAM?
Click to expand...

Educational = you can always learn to use Google to find the prices

Budget = comparing different prices from different stores and go for
whatever please you.

Here are few to get you started.

1. When you use my site www.google.com it will give you a long list of
others

2. My google may give you site like www.nextag.com www.pricewatch.com and
tons of others

3. And the above will display dozen(s) others
 
ddcc said:
I'm looking for DDR SDRAM Non-ECC at PC2100 or above in 512mb sticks.
As a student, I have a limited budget, and I've tried looking up ebay,
newegg, fry's, and everywhere else, but I can't seem to find a stick
anywhere below $30 that passes memtest86+. Any websites that have cheap and
reliable RAM?
Click to expand...

This web page should give you some idea just how cheap RAM can get.
The prices listed on this page, are the lowest price for the item
from a number of suppliers. $32 to $34 is what I see here.

http://www.pricewatch.com/memory/

Note that for suppliers listed on Pricewatch, you should check
resellerratings.com to see if the company is reputable. Where
it says "Enter store name" on http://www.resellerratings.com/
you can enter an Internet store name, and get some idea how
they treat customers.

The cheapest RAM I could find on the Crucial site, is $48, and
odds are, the memory will work. And you'd have a warranty as
well. Shopping for lowest price on the Internet, is likely
to leave you with a story to tell later. Whatever you
decide, remember to use a credit card, so you have the
option of disputing the sale later.

I've bought two lots of "on sale" RAM locally, each with
a 1 year warranty, and had failures at the 1.5 year or so
mark. Generally speaking, cheap RAM comes from sources
like UTT (untested silicon), there is no chip manufacturer
name printed on it. You could well be buying a stick of
"floor sweepings" for $30. But it is your $30, so...

Good luck,
Paul
 
I'm looking for DDR SDRAM Non-ECC at PC2100 or above in 512mb sticks.
As a student, I have a limited budget, and I've tried looking up ebay,
newegg, fry's, and everywhere else, but I can't seem to find a stick
anywhere below $30 that passes memtest86+. Any websites that have cheap and
reliable RAM?
Click to expand...


There is nothing "unreliable" about most memory sold by
those listed above.

You have a specific problem unique to your motherboard or
it's bios. Does your motherboard allow manually setting
memory timings? If so, the answer is probably easier than
you think - buy the cheapest PC3200 CAS2.5 you can find from
a reputible seller, name-brand product if possible, then set
the timings to remain at CAS2.5 or 3, instead of letting the
bios use the SPD which often tends to cause CAS2 at PC2100
speed.

What do you mean "I've tried lookup up ebay,", etc?
Do you mean you have bought all modules below $30 at each
seller? I find this doubtful, your post reads more like
someone who is stretching truth some trying to get others to
do work to save you $. If you can't find memory you want at
$30.00, work an extra hour to make a couple bucks and pay
$35 or $38 or whatever. Being arbitrarily cheap/greedy is
as you are finding out, quickly going to have diminishing
returns.

Everyone would like to just claim "but I want it to work
perfectly at lower cost". Duh. The whole reason why some
parts are especially low in cost is they aren't WORTH as
much for the very real world use. Thus you either play
odds, spend a lot of time and money fiddling with it to save
a small amount of money or know how to put the margins in
your favor a bit more as suggested above with relaxed memory
timings, or raising memory voltage some.

You didn't even bother to mention your motherboard though,
for all we know it just isn't going to be stable populated
with multiple 512MB modules. No motherboard is perfect,
some have memory problems and others just some other problem
instead.
 
Ah sorry. I'm pre-college, and not yet old enough to work. Motherboard is
ECS K7S5A Pro which doesn't support 1gb sticks which means I have to look
for 512mb sticks.
 
Exactly what is bad about the motherboard? I have flashed the BIOS to the
latest version if that's what you mean.
 
Exactly what is bad about the motherboard? I have flashed the BIOS to the
latest version if that's what you mean.
Click to expand...

Overall low quality construction, penny pinching by ECS may
include inferior onboard power subcircuits, capacitors, few
and buggy bios, even substituting jumper wires where anyone
else would use fuses. I've had several of the non-"Pro"
version die, they were so bad they couldn't even use two
PC133 memory modules in the first revision (which was made
worst by the fact that many people bought them specifically
so they could reuse their PC133 memory before they were
ready to move on to DDR(1).

At the very least I hope you have inspected the capacitors,
they may be failing already.
 
Thanks for the info. I've checked and no, there's no
swelling/bulging/exploded capacitors. In fact, the only odd thing I've
noticed is that memtest86+ reports a couple of errors around 216mb on my
stick of 512mb Mushkin PC2100.
 
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