Installing Ram On A Pc

[fry_lover]

My dad's been running his Dell Desktop (Windows XP) on the original 256mb Ram it came with 5 years ago. Not suprisingly the PC has performed poorer and poorer as time has gone on, despite the usual good practice (anti-virus, spyware, disk clean up, defrag, checking what's on start/boot up menu etc).

I helped him order a 512mb chip, and I took out the existing x2 128mb chips and put the 512mb in "slot 1", the PC has 4 of these slots / ports for Ram chips.

I just took the x2 128mb chips out at first. The PC has recognised the upgraded Ram and is now running at 512mb instead of 256mb.

Question

If i put the x2 128mb chips back in, does there need to be any order as to what chip goes in what slot / port. Basically we've got x1 512mb chip and x2 128mb chips' to put into the 4 ports.

Cheers

 

[JenCliBee]

My dad's been running his Dell Desktop (Windows XP) on the original 256mb Ram it came with 5 years ago. Not suprisingly the PC has performed poorer and poorer as time has gone on, despite the usual good practice (anti-virus, spyware, disk clean up, defrag, checking what's on start/boot up menu etc).

I helped him order a 512mb chip, and I took out the existing x2 128mb chips and put the 512mb in "slot 1", the PC has 4 of these slots / ports for Ram chips.

I just took the x2 128mb chips out at first. The PC has recognised the upgraded Ram and is now running at 512mb instead of 256mb.

Question

If i put the x2 128mb chips back in, does there need to be any order as to what chip goes in what slot / port. Basically we've got x1 512mb chip and x2 128mb chips' to put into the 4 ports.

Cheers

No m8, put them in the slots that are there no order is required. Are you sure there is 4 slots for ram though, find that quite odd on an old computer.

 

[helterskelter]

yep it's fine to mix them.

 

[fry_lover]

Thanks peeps, yeh 4 slots

 

[saltynay]

Have you check the timings of the ram and the speeds? 250mb is pitiful even for a dell computer but I would of ordered a 1gb stick as ddr2 is so cheap atm and 1gb is best for standard usage under xp. The timings don't really matter as dells have a locked bios but the speeds may effect overall performance and should be stated on a sticker or the heatsink of the ram. What ram brand and model did you buy? For a much larger performance boost backup all important data and reformat and reinstall windows xp the updates will take a while but after that you willl be sooo much faster unless you have been performing regular maintenance and defrags (with third party software).

 

[fry_lover]

Have you check the timings of the ram and the speeds? 250mb is pitiful even for a dell computer but I would of ordered a 1gb stick as ddr2 is so cheap atm and 1gb is best for standard usage under xp. The timings don't really matter as dells have a locked bios but the speeds may effect overall performance and should be stated on a sticker or the heatsink of the ram. What ram brand and model did you buy? For a much larger performance boost backup all important data and reformat and reinstall windows xp the updates will take a while but after that you willl be sooo much faster unless you have been performing regular maintenance and defrags (with third party software).

Yep I think a 1GB upgrade would have been more appropriate, thats what I did with my Dell, it came with 256mb and I got an extra 1GB to make 1.25GB. On the website I used there was no financial benefit in getting 1GB as oppsed to 512mb (£25 for 512mb and £50 for 1GB). I didn't want to commit myself on behalf of my dad too much, so we agreed to get the 512mb and see what difference it makes.

So far, even with just 512mb in there is makes a massive difference. I am hoping we can slot the x2 128mb back in and bring it up and running to 768mb which atleast will give him x3 more Ram than he had (from 256 to 768).

The Ram brand was Samsung, I don't have the model number but could get it?

I've been helping my dad do regular maintenance over the past few years (virus scans, spyware scans, disk clean-up, de-frags). I also made sure he got rid of Norton anti-virus once it expired as it hogs the system, I now advise him to use AVG (which is what I use).

I'm going to install the extra Ram now, and I think I will PM you if you don't mind as we may still need to go down the route of re-installing Windows and doing a big blitz clean on his PC, as even with 512mb and all items "un-checked" on the start menu, the PC seems to breifly freeze on start up, and complete start up even with 512mb was taking atleast 5 minutes.

I'm going over to my dad's now will check back on here in a few hours, cheers

 

[rabbut]

Hold on!!

With 4 RAM slots on an older machine, it is a big give away that it is giving you a choice of RAM standards. Two slots will likely be DDR2, the other two DDR. Are the slots coloured differently by chance? If so, this is the case. DDR2 RAM will not fit in a DDR port and visa versa, so you will likely only be able to install one of your two spare chips Also, you cannot run both DDR2 and DDR RAM at the same time, so basically, you are likely going to be limited to two chips

It would be great if you do have space for four chips of RAM, but it is unlikely on a new computer, let alone a 5 year old one

All the best
Rabbut

 

[fry_lover]

Hold on!!

With 4 RAM slots on an older machine, it is a big give away that it is giving you a choice of RAM standards. Two slots will likely be DDR2, the other two DDR. Are the slots coloured differently by chance? If so, this is the case. DDR2 RAM will not fit in a DDR port and visa versa, so you will likely only be able to install one of your two spare chips Also, you cannot run both DDR2 and DDR RAM at the same time, so basically, you are likely going to be limited to two chips

It would be great if you do have space for four chips of RAM, but it is unlikely on a new computer, let alone a 5 year old one

All the best
Rabbut

Thanks for that, yes two slots have black clips to hold the Ram in place and two have white clips, thats the only difference between the slots I can see. After taking out the old x2 128mb chips and using just the one x512mb all seems well. I know it's only 512mb Ram but it's made a heck of a difference to the performance of my dad's PC and he's chuffed.

I'm thinking of not bothering trying to fit in one of the remaining 128mb as it's taken ages to get this far and I think my dad and myself are happy to call it a day and settle for 512mb right now.

PC is going from "on" to fully loaded/started-up and internet ready in 30 seconds, it was taking about 10 minutes before

I've also checked his "start-up" menu, done a disk clean up, defrag and spyware scan, all ok.

Actually his maintenance routine was ok before, i just think the PC eventually threw a strop at running on 256mb Ram and just froze up. I was figuring as it's running fine now I will not go through a Window's re-set, unless there are further problems.

Interesting info on the Ram slots and DDR, thanks for that

 

[saltynay]

You fell in to the trap of buying dell approved ram or something similar if you paid that much for 512mb yo should have posted here before starting but nvm what is done is done.

Very few motherboards had both DDR and DDR2 support natively and I doubt a generic brand like dell would add this extra cost if they were onl installing DDR2 ram. The different colours are different channels and combining to sticks of the same specs increases the overall speed as the two sticks work in unison. My motherboard looks like this:

Notice the blue and white slots on the bottom right below the cpu gap the slots next to each other, they are the dual channel slots so one is blue an one is white within one channel.It will most likely have a tiny piece of writing saying "Dimm A1, Dimm A2, Dimm B1, Dimm B2" with each name listed below the other, to identify the slots that are working in unison. If I put one stick in A1 and another in B1 I will get slightly less performance then putting one in A1 and one in A2 as A is the same channel. My point being the 512mb should be in a channel of its own and the 128mb should be in the same channel with its counterpart.

Ram should just clip in without a fuss I am having a current problem with my desktop so have been swapping around 6 sticks of ram and testing out different slots to figure out the problem: turn off computer, open side panel push both clips until ram pops out, replace with new stick and push hard enough to make both clips lock in, slide the panel back on and test it works then lock the panel in place. its a 5 minute job once you know what your doing.

The next step on optimisation is to go run "msconfig" then get rid of any unneeded startup programs and select no-gui boot and tick the box saying keep these settings in definitely (something along those lines). Now go Control panel>>> admin tools>>> services and disable any service on start up that you don't need.

 

[fry_lover]

thanks for feedback, the ports / slots did not like your ones, all the four slots were black, it was just that two had black "clips" on either end and two had white "clips" on each end.

However, it's just going to run with the 512mb now, seems to be ok.

Thanks for taking the time to educate me on some of this stuff

 

[rabbut]

Salty, if you are having RAM trouble, load up each slot and then run a memory checker on the computer. It will tell you which RAM slot is causing the problem. Swap to a known good module in the dodgy slot to check it isn't the module and confirm it's the slot, then you can see how to proceed

I use the build-in memory testing software on the Linux Ubuntu CD. You don't need to install Linux to use it, it will run a memory test right off the CD.

All the best
Rabbut

 

[saltynay]

Yeah I have ubuntu as well as it on a disk gparted and maryan. I am lucky if I get past the boot splash screen an into setup.