Various manufacturers produce desktop memory. Below, we've listed a selection of the different brands that you may find in the memory marketplace. Perhaps a memory chip from one of these companies is already in your home or office PC!

Corsair
Crucial Technology
Directron
Infineon
Kingston
Mushkin
OCZ Technology
Super Talent
Transcend
Kanguru
PQI
A-data
PNY

You may have recognized these brand names from other computer items, as well. In addition to desktop memory, some companies may also produce parts such as memory for laptops or netbooks, hard drives, USB flash drives, solid state drives, monitors, power supply units, CD/DVD drives and burners, printers, and others.

Ideas for when buying memory

When purchasing additional desktop memory to supplement your current amount, remember that if you intend to keep a current chip along with the new one, some modules certain brands may not work well, or at all, with another company's chips. This can occur even if the types of RAM are the same and generally considered compatible. Prior to purchasing an upgrade, attempt to find whether the memory is suitable not only for your PC as a whole, but also for your current RAM.

If you are buying memory to make a new system, be sure that the RAM fits the standards of the computer that you are building. For instance, does the motherboard support that format (DDR2, for example)? If so, can it take memory with the frequency of the kind you want to buy? How many slots for chips are there? Does this brand in particular have any known compatibility issues with the motherboard or other parts on the computer (research may be conducted online in order to do a quick check on this)? These are some questions that you may consider, along with the standard ones, such as how much memory you will actually need in order to run the programs you intend to use at a performance level you will accept.