How much Ram is enough?

[massahwahl]

Finishing up my HTPC and I'm trying to find a good deal on some DDR 400 pc3200 ram and it seems to be expensive regardless of how you slice it.

This computer is essentially only going to be storing DVDs and music and recording one channel with the tuner card and have one live channel playing. So how much ram is enough? Would 1gig be good or should I suck it up and go for the full 2 gigs?

 

[Cromewell]

I think most cards have a hardware mpeg encoder so you shouldn't need too much RAM or CPU power.

 

[massahwahl]

The card I'm getting does have the mpeg encoder. That mean 1 gig is enough?

 

[Ramodkk]

Yeah, DDR memory is expensive. I wouldn't think you need more than 1GB

 

[massahwahl]

Awesome! That will help a lot.

 

[Damian Stormbow]

I concurr!

 

[pdc76]

2 gigs ddr will run you under $45 shipped. i would consider 2, you'll be happy you did it.

 

[massahwahl]

Just found a new 1gig set on ebay for $15... I'm happy I did that. Down the road I may upgrade to the full 2, running linux I don't think it will make much of a difference. On my main computer with 3gigs it never peeked past 1gig when I was watching tv or anything.