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I've mentioned in the past my PC has a weird amount of RAM, specifically 10GB. This is the RAM the PC came with when my dad bought it for me in college and I never really thought much about upgrading since for years now most games still only needed around 8 GB of RAM at most. Well yeah it's looking like I need to change that, especially if I plan on eventually getting VR at some point as I noticed some VR games like Half-Life: Alyx require a MINIMUM of 12 GB of RAM, and within the past couple of years I've noticed some games recommending upwards of 16 GB of RAM for optimal performance (one of the first I saw with this was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided back in 2016).

The motherboard in my PC supports 240 pin DDR3 RAM, with the official specs saying it supports "PC3 10600 (DDR3-1333)" and "PC3 12800 (DDR3-1600)." Giving a look online I see a brand called "Crucial" popping up quite a bit and their prices and such look fine to me (also customer reviews were quite positive), but I most often hear people recommending RAM from companies like Corsair. I'm still kind of a novice when it comes to some of this sort of stuff (I also know a day will eventually come when the motherboard will need to be updated in order to also update the CPU as apparently this "Angelica" motherboard from 2012 can only be upgraded to an FX-8350 which is a CPU that AMD no longer sells themselves), so I'm looking for advice from those with way more knowledge than me.

I'm not the most well-informed with all the terms on RAM beyond knowing they got different speeds and sizes but as far as "brand" goes, I just go with the ones that are reliable based off reviews. Aside from Crucial, I know G.Skill and Corsair are reliable alternatives. DDR3 is pretty much out of date like the FX-8350 since I don't know of any modern day motherboards that support it since they all go for DDR4 but there should still be places like New Egg and Amazon that sell them.

I don't know. Looks like "brand" does matter, but I know next to nothing about how hardware works.

The brand doesn't matter much, it's the speed, timings, and voltage that do.

I recently replaced the RAM in my desktop gaming/work PC. I went from two sticks 8GB each of Crucial DDR4 2666 to two sticks 8GB each of G.Skill DDR4 3200. My main goal was upgrading to RAM that was a bit faster than what I had bought initially.

You mainly just want to check for the same things you do when buying ant other PC part. You want to buy from a respectable brand that has good reviews and customer service. When upgrading you also have to make sure you're picking something compatible with your other parts. If you go to your RAM brand's website you could probably look up any direct upgrades that they provide. If you want to switch brands then you can look up your motherboard and see what's compatible with it.

Also, you shouldn't mix brands of RAM or RAM of different specs. My motherboard has four slots for RAM but I replaced the Crucial RAM instead of just adding the G.Skill because the RAMs have different speeds.

Other than what BravelyDefect mentioned, it has no importance beyond that. As long as it is compatible with all your current hardware pieces – which most reputable brands are – then you are fine. It is not as finnicky of as aspect as it is with graphics cards.

Not at all. As long as the specs are negligibly different (no mixing DDR generations, have each capable of handling the same range of clock speeds, voltage shouldn't be too much a concern), then you can pair in things if necessary. Brands are just there to tell you about their track record. That's it.

I went ahead and ordered 16 GB of G.Skill DDR3. Should be all I need for the last few years of this rig's life. Come maybe two or three years from now it'll be time to let the ol' Windows 7 rig stop being my main PC and move on to something running Windows 10 (or maybe 11 if it's out at the time and not a mess) and go full custom on the hardware too. By that time DDR5 will be a thing and I'll move up to an Nvidia RTX and AMD Ryzen (by that time I'm guessing Nvidia will be up to the RTX 5000 or 6000 series and AMD will either be on Ryzen 8000 or moved on to a new line of CPU architecture) and hopefully by then an SSD that can hold 2TB or more of data will be way more affordable.

I'll still hold on to the Windows 7 PC for some stuff (like older games that still don't work right on Windows 10 and beyond), but yep next time around I'll be ready to go full custom rather than just updating a pre-built store rig.

Go ahead, it'll be more expensive though. Custom rigs aren't cheap.

Especially with the COVID going on. Last I heard, a lot of GPU's got into the hands of scalpers. Same may apply to some of the new CPU's out there as well.