Looking to go into a first time PC build shortly and I will be needing 2Gb of RAM. But there are so many options and so many prices.........different brands respectability, potential for OC, latencies (and ICs?) are all things that seem to be important but I do not know what they mean.

My only starting point is this article but its a little outdated and incomplete coverage of all the major brands. Can anyone give me any advice and guidelines?

I think I'll be looking around the £100 or less range but all suggestions and recommendations are appreciated.

I found that PNY and Kingston are pretty good brands. All you really need to look for is what PC speed is needed. Like PC3200 or something like that.

Hope I helped.

-Steve

Well what's the fastest speed? My understanding is that DDR2 industry standard is PC6400 and thats the one to go for - is that right? I dont know..........

I am not sure, but that sounds correct, but will the motherboard support it?

-Steve

You mentioned over clocking, if you intend to over clock the RAM then you need to go with good quality modules like Crucial Ballistix .

http://www.crucial.com/Ballistix/index.asp

Ok thanks for pointing out those brands but I have the same problem when I look at their sites in that I don't know where to start. What exactly do the 'PCxx00' ratings mean? Crucial have a '2GB kit(1GBx2) DDR2 PC2-8500 Ballistix Tracer 240-pin DIMM' which apparently is faster

With regards to the mobo people are asking about, I will probably have a pretty good one based on the Intel P35 chipset with a Q6600 CPU and 8800GTS 320 graphics card. So I need memory that will sit happily with these products. I know that the CPU is know for good OC ability and 1 day in the future I might venture into all this so I would like good quality RAM that will support this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....1066+(PC2+8500)

good memory, but don't expect to overclock any memory much

look for the new GO stepping 1333
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115029

research the build well, from the questions you are asking it's obvious you need to do more homework