[manu08]

I just need some advise. I have a desktop machine with Pentium 4 3.00GHz with HT, 1.5GB RAM (3x512MB), 256MB ATI Radeon X800XL GC (AGP), 2x80GB HDD, 40GB HDD, 17"LCD Monitor. Oh and if this helps I have 2 front fans, one left panel fan, two rear fans+PSU fan+CPU fan+GC fan. (It's an Alienware if that helps sort out what the machine is like). Basically I play a lot of games and just wanna improve the overall performance of my machine. I have only one more memory slot left. Should I buy a 1GB memory stick or liquid cooling? Which will give me the greater performance boost? My comp is on 24/7. I am willing to spend about $100 for the RAM or about $140 for the liquid cooling. Oh, and I don't plan to upgrade to Vista anytime soon. Any comments and suggestions are welcome. Thanks

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Well cooling will have no effect on performance and $100 gets half decent memory and $140 wont buy a half decent water cooling kit.

[warriorscot]

Well cooling will have no effect on performance and $100 gets half decent memory and $140 wont buy a half decent water cooling kit.

[troppo]

i believe you would see a notable differnce in just buying another 512 of RAM so that your board will have a total of 2Gb and run in dual channel mode rather than single channel

troppo

[warriorscot]

Maybe not troppo, keep in mind that maxing the ram slots out will on a great many boards incur a speed penalty on dual channel reducing the speed one notch on the DDR scale and you lose most of that 30% boost from dual channel straight off that bat.

[troppo]

well that is true but still you would be better to not even worry baout liquid cooling if your not goign to overclock and replace all the 512 sticks with 2 sticks of 1 Gb

you could always sell your 512's on ebay and get some money back ffrom them
thats my opinion

[warriorscot]

You couldnt get any water cooling that would take overclocking for that money anyway.

[manu08]

Hmm ok so basically with the money I got I can't do anything useful to my computer or improve it for future gaming? I've no plans of purchasing a new comp anytime soon, definitely not for gaming anyway but with the new games demanding more & more from the machines I just wanted to give in a little. Guess not. Thanks for the help anyway.

[Titan8990]

Maybe not troppo, keep in mind that maxing the ram slots out will on a great many boards incur a speed penalty on dual channel reducing the speed one notch on the DDR scale and you lose most of that 30% boost from dual channel straight off that bat.

By "maxing" our the RAM slots do you mean use all four available slots or having the max ammount of RAM that the MOBO can handle?

[manu08]

Well cooling will have no effect on performance and $100 gets half decent memory and $140 wont buy a half decent water cooling kit.

I bought this memory for just below $100 with the MIR and well to be honest it looks like a good speedy memory kit, what do you think?
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227069