Memory and Storage - Build an Awesome PC - page 42

CHAPTER 4
Memory and Storage
With the hardest part of building your PC completed, the remainder of the
assembly is simply a matter of putting a few more parts together. But although
doing this is easy, deciding which parts to use is where the challenge comes
in. We are committed to building an awesome PC, so we need excellent com-
ponents to complete our objective.
A key performance indicator in a computer, besides the speed of the CPU, is
how quickly data can be fetched to move in and out of the CPU. The computer
relies on storage to keep track of short- and long-term data. Short-term data
is stored in random-access memory (RAM) while longer-term data (data that
needs to survive after a system shuts down, for example) is stored on fixed
media such as a solid-state drive (SSD) or hard-disk drive (HDD). Long-term
data can also be stored on removable media such as DVD optical discs, though
these devices are typically used for archival or physical-transport purposes.
In this chapter we will be providing for all four storage types in our computer.
We'll start with RAM.
RAM Speed and Performance
Just as there are different CPU sizes that fit into specific types of motherboard
sockets, RAM modules are available in various configurations. The type of
RAM that fits into our motherboard is known as double data rate type three
synchronous dynamic random-access memory , or DDR3 SDRAM—DDR3 for
short. The most prevalent data rate for DDR3 is 1,333 megatransfers per
second (MT/s). That's a lot of data that can flow in a second, and while that's
plenty fast for most PCs, we need something a bit peppier for ours.
Because our CPU and motherboard can handle the throughput thanks to the
motherboard's support of Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP), we are going
for the gold by dialing our DDR3 RAM up to whopping 2,400 MT/s! Corsair