CD-RW's and RAM.

[blockers]

Hi.

I am looking to get a CD-RW/DVD drive in Febuary, thought i could call on all of your expert knowledge to get me a good one. I dont want to spend more than £40 ideally, but it must be a combo drive.

I have been looking at overclockers.co.uk and the Sony drive in particular (last 2) Sony CRX300E 48x/24x/48x/16x CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (White) - OEM.

Is this a good drive? anyone got it? should i get the samsang on (52x 24x 16x )

I only really want to buy well-known brands, Sony, Samsung, LG, Plexor etc

Also, at the same time i am going to order 256mb of RAM for my brother. He has:
xp1800 (pally)
KG7-RAID (pc1600/pc2100)
256mb pc2700 (at 133 or pc2100)

He is going to be upgrading when HL2 and D3 come out, so this RAM is just to hold him for now. I have 3 choices pc2100/pc2700/pc3200, and want to spend as little as possible, dont care about manufacturer as he is currently using a 'generic' stick from aria.co.uk. Im guess that when he upgrades he will buy some new RAM as well, as by then (April-ish) all of this will probably be old hat. This RAM is just to hold him until then.

So, what RAM do people recommend?

One final point; im not buying anything from Ebuyer so can you not even suggest it!!

Thanks all
Will

[Furton]

I've got both the Sony and the Samsung drive, I prefer the Sony one since it seems quieter and a bit more reliable, a few CD-R's have been messed up by the Samsung.

[eldren]

I'd recommend LG, having an LG writer myself. Far as I know, they're the only brand that makes an attempt at preventing CDs from exploding (They do this by limiting read and write speeds to 48x, unless you press and hold the eject button for 3 seconds when loading a CD). That, and I've had no problems with it.

As for your brother's RAM, it may make almost no difference when buying cheap generic RAM which speed you get. In this country, literally, 256 megs of DDR266, 333 and 400 costs R300, R310 and R320, respectively. However, on the other hand, unless he has a lot of money to upgrade (As in, he'll be going for 2x 512MB dimms), you could just go for high-end DDR400 now, and just use it in the new system.