Need help upgrading ram

Im trying to upgrade from 1GB to 2Gb ram. I have a dell e521 with 1GB (512 x 2) and i believe it is DDR2 PC4200, or PC5300 but im not sure which. Also I was looking at newegg and they have alot of ram options there. I was looking at a Corsair 1GB, 512x 2 PC 5300 667mhz without heat spreaders for around $85, anyone have any experience with corsair or could tell me if my current comp ram has heat spreaders and if I need them? -thx

The idea of heat spreaders is to help keep the memory temps lower. This is one thing commonly seen on performance dimms where people often oc memory. Corsair is one of the best names available for gaming systems. The first thing to do however is look over the specifications seen on that model to see what memory is supported. Dell's product and specifications show DDR2 533 for that model which would be PC2 4200.

If you are planning to run Vista by chance you want a look at going for 2gb instead of 1gb for the new version of Windows to get the most out of it. The link here shows the pairs of 1gb dimms for different brands. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ubCategory=147

Corsair, Kingston, Crucial, Mushkin, and OCZ are all top brands with OCZ having the premium price for premium memory. The 533mhz memory is the fastest supported. Where Dell's own information lacks some additional information is seen at http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Dell-Dim...ce.abcnews.com

yeah I am runing vista and was having some problems while runing games and was told that upgrading ram would probably solve my problem. So it seems I need to get the DDR2 PC-4200 533mhz. Ill probably pick up the 512 x 2 since thats what I already have in my comp and that will put me up to 2GB ram. Out of curiousity though would putting PC-5300 667mhz in my comp not be compatible? I ran a system check on a site and it said I had PC-5100, and I thought that was odd.

The reading could have been way off unless the memory is oced somehow or a faster memory was backclocking to 533mhz. The specifications seen do show that the 533mhz speed is the fastest supported. You don't really want to mismatch memory. While sometimes you could get away with installing memory that was one speed faster on the first channel DDR2 is a little more fussy there. The faster memory if it works at all will run at the slower speed.