Currently, I have one 512 mb Apple RAM and a 1 GB RAM stick from Other World Computing. I'm thinking of buying another 1 GB RAM stick. Would it be bad if I bought it from another company? Would it ruin my AppleCare Protection Plan?

[tavin64]

There is no problem with running 2 sticks from different vendors. The only thing is that to be able to run dual channel on your system it is recommended to use two exact sticks of ram as having two different ones might have different timings. You can always try and see if it causes no issues but its best to go with 2 identical sticks. As far as applecare is concerned you can put any brand of ram you want and long as they are the correct specs without affecting the warranty.

Thanks, I'm going to buy some RAM now

[tavin64]

If you want 2 identical sticks I recommend this ram to everyone with a macbook and macbook pro as they are excellent at a great price.

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Notebook Memory - Retail

I have 2 sticks of that ram on my MacBook CD and my wife's MacBook Pro. They have been running rock solid for a year now.

[mduell]

Mixing memory from two different vendors is fine; in fact, you've already done it.
As long as the speed and capacity are the same, you should get dual channel performance.

I recommend against G.SKILL and all the other "1337 overclocker" brands that are pushing the DDR2-667 = PC2-5400 sham.

Take Crucial for $54. Saving a dollar with cheap brands isn't worth the hassle.

[tavin64]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Mixing memory from two different vendors is fine; in fact, you've already done it.
As long as the speed and capacity are the same, you should get dual channel performance.

I recommend against G.SKILL and all the other "1337 overclocker" brands that are pushing the DDR2-667 = PC2-5400 sham.

Take Crucial for $54. Saving a dollar with cheap brands isn't worth the hassle.

Cheap ram? You do realize that all ram chips come from 3 places: Samsung, Infineon and Micron. I can tell that you have never seen fast ram in action. I suggest you ask around before calling G.SKILL cheap ram. Also crucial is known to put not so great ram on their high end sticks. Hell their Ballistix "performance ram" that was DDR400 used slow Micron chips that had a hard time doing cas2 at 1T. Yet they charged a huge premium over other manufacturers like OCZ, G.SKILL who used samsung UCCC and TCCD chips which are legendary for being the fastest pc3200 chips ever. And most micron chips are not better than samsung ones.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by tavin64 

Cheap ram? You do realize that all ram chips come from 3 places: Samsung, Infineon and Micron. I can tell that you have never seen fast ram in action. I suggest you ask around before calling G.SKILL cheap ram. Also crucial is known to put not so great ram on their high end sticks. Hell their Ballistix "performance ram" that was DDR400 used slow Micron chips that had a hard time doing cas2 at 1T. Yet they charged a huge premium over other manufacturers like OCZ, G.SKILL who used samsung UCCC and TCCD chips which are legendary for being the fastest pc3200 chips ever. And most micron chips are not better than samsung ones.

Yes, cheap RAM. I've seen and had enough bad experiences with G.SKILL, GEIL, PNY, SUPER TALENT (notice they're all upper case? weird), and their ilk to stay away.
What about Hynix? And Mosel Vitelic? And Elpida?
I wouldn't waste my money on Ballistix or any of the other overclocker brands. Most of the benchmarks/comparisons come to the same conclusion, that the low latency RAM doesn't really improve performance, and especially not in Macs where you can't adjust the memory timings. For the price of a 1% performance increase you can get with your l33t low-latency overclocker RAM in a PC, you could see a bigger improvement by buying twice as much of the normal stuff.

Don't bother posting benchmarks from "hardcore l33t overclocker dudes forums" showing "massive all-around performance improvements" with low latency RAM. I've read the reports from sites that I consider credible, and I'm not interested in reading any more.

[ghporter]

The difference between a Crucial or Kingston finished DIMM and some brand like G.SKILL is how they put the chips together. A lot of "budget" companies have lesser standards for matching the chips on a single DIMM, or for how closely the finished product fits the timing standard the device is marked as.

I have, however, had great success with PNY, though not in a Mac; this may be something to consider, since a lot of Macs have much tighter RAM timing tolerances than a lot of PCs. There was a large number of G4 iBooks that would work with some RAM but not others, and it seems to have been exclusively how well each brand matched the RAM timing specs.

[tavin64]

G.Skill is a pretty new brand (has only been out for about 2 years) and have become well known for offering good quality ram backed by a great warranty. I am not going to argue with you about fast ram because you obviously dont know that it can do on the PC side of things. Ram with faster timings is more beneficial when you are using it on a system with a built in memory controller like Athlon 64. And if you want to argue that then do it with AMD as they themselves have said this is the case. Of course you might not care right now but when Intel switches to an integrated memory controller platform next year you will care. Just because they are new does not mean they are generic in any way. Hell OCZ started out known as a generic brand and now they are known to offer some of highest quality ram out there.