How much RAM?

[colin07]

I plan on building my own PC, how much RAM should I get?

[Chris]

This depends on which operating system you are intending on using.

For WinXP, i'd recommend about 1gb
For Vista, I'd recommend 2gb (they say 1gb, but in my experience this is way too low)
For Linux, I'd recomend 512mb to 1gb depending on what you're doing. For a server, i'd go for 1-2gb.

[RecT]

Unless you're doing a lot of graphics editing whilst simultaneously playing high end games, you wont need more than 2gb.

[colin07]

I've decided to just go for 8gb for vista as I want to play lots of high end games, should it be DDR2 or DDR3?

[RecT]

Well.....

8gb is a lot of ram, if you have the money then go for ddr3. But it is really expensive at the moment. It needs a DDR3 motherboard though, have you already bought this? Personally, I use DDR2 because there is no noticable drop in performance.

8gb with Vista will also require Vista 64-bit which is a bit tricky for some applications as not everyone has made programmes that are 64bit compatable.