I think I’ve finally found some better solutions for my MacBook RAM dilemma. I don’t know why I was having so much trouble finding PC5300 RAM the other day. The day following my orginal post, Lauren sent me some links from newegg.com which is weird because it is one of the places I checked. I don’t know why I didn’t find it the day before. Maybe, they just got it in or something. To make me feel even worse about not finding anything, Lauren doesn’t really know that much about the technical side of RAM. She knows what it is, and that it is needed to make a computer run faster, but she had to reference my previous post to even know what to search for.

Her finds were very useful. I am seriously considering one of them. The other one is a good option as well. Both are from reputable manufactures, Corsair and Kingston respectively.

Both are value RAM. At first that worried me because I wondered why “value” RAM cost around $50 cheaper per gigabyte than “select” RAM. So, being a curious person and frugal consumer I researched it. Techspot.com had a nice article explaining the difference. In essence, every piece of select RAM has been had tested by the manufacturer while value RAM is only tested in batches. This reduces the manufacturing cost of value RAM and ensures that select RAM is of utmost quality.

At the same time, value RAM from both Kingston and Corsair is actually produced by those companies and comes with a manufactures lifetime warranty (they don’t buy their value RAM in the open market like some other manufactures do). Therefore, the value RAM from Corsair and Kingston is going to be better quality than a lot of other RAM. To further reduce my concerns, the Techspot reviewer stated, “The performance variations between the Corsair XMS and Value Select memory were much lower than I had anticipated. Given I was expecting fairly small margins, this is quite a shock.” He concluded by noting that “select” RAMS overclocking abilities is what sets it apart. I don’t have any plans to overclock so value select sounds like the smarter choice. The $50 saved can go somewhere else.

So, if the 2 GB of Corsair RAM is purchased for $177.80 from ZipZoomFly rather than getting 2 GB from Apple.com for $450. I’m saving $272.20. You may be wondering why I decided to consider buying from ZipZoomFly as opposed to Newegg when ZipZoomFly charges $88.90 for 1 GB of the Corsair RAM and Newegg charges $84.99. Well, I happen to live in a state that newegg charges tax for. Plus, the shipping isn’t free from newegg. When tax and shipping are considered, ZipZoomFly is $14.19 cheaper. Don’t forget the details when comparison shopping!

Nonetheless, I do have a couple of concerns about the Corsair and Kingston value RAM. For one, neither claim to support the MacBook even though the technical specs of the RAM are the same as what the MacBook ships with. I believe they just haven’t officially tested the it yet. I read in some forums where some people have used the Corsair RAM I’m considering in the new Intel Macs without any trouble. The more expensive (select) Kingston RAM has been MacBook approved. But is it worth the extra $82? I highly doubt it. Has anyone used either of the value RAMs in a new Intel based Mac?

I am leaning towards Corsair because it is slightly cheaper than Kingston and Corsair has a good reputation just like Kingston does. I wish I could find Crucial memory was just as cheap as the other two since Crucial seems to be the favorite of many people on the web.

If any of my readers have any advice, please share. I would love to know before spending advising someone to buy this RAM. Also, if you know anything about ZipZoomFly as a retailer let me know. Thanks in advance!