While looking through XBMC I noticed that of the 1005MB of RAM available only 25-75MB were free, and that’s before playing a video. It’s obvious that if I plan on making this machine anywhere near capable of being an HTPC I’m going to have to upgrade. So that’s my mission tonight, head to Memory Express to pick up some RAM for the Ubuntu Box and potentially a 1TB hard drive to pair with the current 300GB I’m running. Let’s go over the specs on my current Linux Box.

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe link
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.833GHz link
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 512MB link
Audio: Onboard (Have an Audigy XS but not sure if it’s supported in Ubuntu as it’s not working)
Memory: 1GB DDR1 SDRAM (max 3GB)
Operating System: Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex 32-bit (seeing that my processor is 64-bit capable perhaps I should upgrade?) link
Hard Drive: 300GB

It’s obviously not a power system and it’s starting to really show its age. The Front Side Bus on this thing is only 400MHz (compared to most newer motherboards supporting 1666MHz) with only DDR1 SDRAM instead of the current wave of DDR3. The processor isn’t even dual-core and not even 2.0GHz (might need to overclock it). The only component that can probably hold its weight is the video card which is HDCP-ready and capable of 1920×1080 resolution. This is why I’ll first be upgrading the RAM and hard drive. The two cheapest components where I won’t feel like I’ve thrown away my money. This is what I’ve boiled my choices down to for RAM:

• Mushkin EM3200 Enhanced DDR SDRAM, 2GB Dual Pack (2 x 1GB)
• Mushkin HP3200 High Performance DDR SDRAM, 2GB Dual Pack
• Mushkin SP3200 Green Series DDR SDRAM, 1GB (2x)

The price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive is $10 so I’m not too concerned with price. If anyone has a suggestion as to which to purchase though I would appreciate it.

UPDATE:
After checking the box itself for what RAM I had, it turns out I had 2 sticks of 512MB, meaning in order to max out the RAM on the box I would have to can both of those sticks in favour of 3 1GB sticks (DDR1 only comes in 1GB sticks). So I purchased the HP3200 High Performance 2GB Dual Pack and 1 stick of the SP3200 Green Series 1GB. Boxee now runs WAY better.