h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to work with an Indian fellah whose name, somewhat appropriately was Ram. He set himself up as the de facto IT specialist. In fact, he was downgrading all our PCs with the lowest RAM 'chips'(?) and upgrading his own machine so that he could surf pornography more efficiently.

I eventually took my own machine to pieces to have a look, and using the knowledge I'd inferred from what I suspected him of doing, upgraded it with a simple purchase of some RAM. It was quite straight forward in fact.

Trout

Memory is as cheap as chips. Buy as much as you can, it's great. Do they still call it RAM? I think that's a term that's kinda on it's way out. Anyway, so long as you get the right sort of memory you can install it more easily than almost anything else. Its as simple as plugging it in, and turning on the computer. Sounds easy enough, and usually it is. You don't need to reconfigure anything, it does it all itself. However, there are a few pitfalls. There are loads of different sorts of memory, and they are not all the same. So make sure you get the right one. Most decent memory-selling companies will certainly advise you on what sort to get. Don't ever ever buy or accept second-hand memory. Another problem is actually fitting the stuff in. It can be a bit fiddly, and you will no doubt bark your knuckles. Blood is not good for the motherboard! Some older memory types are really hard to fit in, but you will need to persist with a combination of strength and cunning. Don't ever force it though. It also makes a difference in which order you put the memory in. There are usually four slots, numbered 0-3, and you need to start in 0 and work your way towards 3. Normally, if your memory cards are not all the same size, start with the larger ones and work down. I don't know if it's generally true, but I've found that putting in memory in the wrong order is not permanently harmful to either computer or memory - a bit of trial and error will normally sort it out.

Beware of the cheapest RAM. A friend fitted a PC-133 DIMM he'd bought recently, and his machine became extremely unstable. I went to the chip manufacturer's website, and decoded the part numbers on the ICs using the table they thoughtfully provided for the purpose. The chips were rated to run at a maximum of 125MHz, and the address bus was only rated up to PC-66!

He took it back to the shop for a refund, but they refused on the grounds I had written "This is not PC-133" on the warranty sticker in indelible red ink. Presumably that meant they would be unable to sell it to the next sucker who came along. What a shame for them. Anyway, the sticker clearly said "Warranty invalidated if removed"; nothing about not writing on it...

I'm going to buy the memory off him for £15, and he's going to chip in £10 to upgrade to 256MB of (hopefully) better RAM. I need memory for my AMD K6 machine, and this is more than fast enough for that purpose.

The moral seems to be that manufacturers are happy to sell 125MHz parts to suppliers who will label them as 133MHz, if it saves them a few pennies per chip.

Important points to remember when buying memory:

1) Make sure you're buying the right sort.

Getting memory of the correct type, capacity and speed are all vital. By 'type', I mean SDRAM, RDRAM, SIMMs, DIMMs, DDR and so on. (Many of the different 'types' have different physical shapes - so the wrong sort shouldn't fit in.) To further confuse matters, most types of memory come in single- and double-sided versions - the double-sided having twice the capacity of the single.

If necessary, go into W*nd*ws system info/device manager to get as many details as you can about it. Then get your system manual (that'll be [one of] the not-so-little book[s] that came with your 'puter) and check to see what types of memory your 'puters motherboard will take.

If you're still not confident, open up your machine (after turning it off, unplugging, etc and taking the necessary anti-static precautions) and take out one of the memory sticks. Put it in an anti-static bag (any new 'internal' component should come in one) and take it with you to the shop when you go to buy your new memory.


2) How much can your 'puter cope with?

Some older machines would need a lot of upgrading (or more than you might want to do) to cope with huge amounts of memory. They may work fine with 512MB in, but they may only be using part of it. Which would mean you've wasted your money on memory that won't get used.


2a) What 'combinations' of memory can your PC cope with?

Again, more for the older machines: some are fussy about what capacity memory modules you use together. For instance, if you wanted if you wanted 64MB, you could use either two lots of 16MBx2 (x2 because of the matched pairs) or one lot of 32MBx2. You might *not* be able to use one lot of 16MBx2 and two lots of 8MBx2. Check in your system manual...


3) How much do you need?

By this, I don't actually mean capacity-wise. Some (older) machines need memory to be added in 'matched pairs' - so adding just one extra memory module will at best do nothing, at worst stop your computer doing anything.


4) Where should it go?

Some machines are fussy about how you add the memory. For instance, if you had a single matched pair of memory modules, it might only work in the first pair of sockets. If you were to add another pair (rather than swap them over) which sockets you add it to might depend on what capacity each pair is. Something to look up in your system manual.

"Which would mean you've wasted your money on memory that won't get used..."

Not necessarily. As long as your machine takes something relatively modern, say like PC100 DRAM, there's generally no downside to fitting as much as you can afford of, say, PC-133 DRAM (Faster is almost always safe; slower (e.g. PC-66) won't work. ) then you can always move it into a newer motherboard in future which can use the extra speed. (and, in the case of older boards which only "see" 256MB, the extra capacity...)

Weirdly, PC-133 currently costs noticeably less than PC-100, and 512MB is usually only £5-£10 more than 256MB, so if you intended to fit 256MB of PC-100 you can fit 512MB of PC-133 for the same price, and have the option of moving it into a faster system in the future.

One final tip - buy your RAM online; not only is it generally cheaper, but most companies that my friends and I have dealt with are happy to exchange it if you ordered the "wrong" type, meaning you can try the PC-133, and if it doesn't work for some bizarre reason, and you're careful not to damage it, you're only out the cost of a stamp (and any price difference) to exchange it.

It's always worth getting as much RAM as you can afford... Windows will eat it up and ask for more no matter how much you have, games benefit from it hugely. I've got 512MB of the stuff and it still fills up quite easily at times (but I do have three more DIMM sockets, and the motherboard will take 3.5GB ).

Still, always best to get as much as you can. In many cases, memory can make a bigger impact than a processor upgrade, if you don't have enough, because it will reduce the amount of swapping to disk which the computer has to do, and since hard drives are much, much slower than any kind of RAM you will encounter, this is a significant gain.

actually just bought a 128 RAM thingy today and put it in and I cannot believe how fast my computer has become !!!

I just got W*ndows 98SE put on and wiped ME (took a bit, the computer resisted!) off the change is unbelieveable, I actually have a computer that will do what it is told........


Hel2

And it's running Windows you say?

I'm told on reasonably good authotity that Windows 98, 98SE and ME can never "see" more than 512MB of RAM, no matter how much you actually have fitted. I have a friend whose Win98SE machine has a Gigabyte of RAM fitted, but I have never had the opportunity to check that it's using all of it.

(authototy = authority )

A lot of Memory- selling websites now have 'RAM Wizards', i.e a little questionnairre which gives you little pull- down menus asking you what make your computer is, which model etc, and then tells you what type of memory is compatible, how much you can install and other such bits of information. This can be somewhat easier than trying to find out what you need from all the leaflets and books and things (especially if, like me, you're no- technowizard and you have no idea where to look).
The only potential problem with this is that the wizards are often supplied by a particular Memory manufactuer, so at the end of it all, they only show you their products. This isn't too much of a problem however, as you can easily copy down the confusing Memory- type and size information and use it to search the site to see if there is any cheaper compatible memory available.

TK

I've heard this about Windows 95/98/ME too. I run XP at home: it's fast, rock solid and sees all the RAM. So, if you're running proper 32-bit Windows (NT-based) then yes, upgrade the RAM. NT/2000/XP is a memory hog, what with all the services it has running. It's a bit like driving a modern car: twice as much safety equipment, twice as many horses needed under the bonnet.

A word of warning, though: legacy memory is always more expensive than bang-up-to-date memory, so often upgrading an old machine's RAM isn't worth it. Wait until someone you know replaces their computer and do a RAM-raid on the carcase of the old one.

* nods *

There's no point having more than 512MB with the 9x series of Windows really, it wouldn't know what to do with it. Windows 95 had a horrible problem with more than 32MB at one point!

With NT-based Windows though, give it all you want! Same trick works in Linux as well, and I believe you can see similar effects on the Mac as well, as all three systems like having lots of fast memory available.

Mac OS-X, perhaps. The original Mac OS memory manager required you to manually set the amount of memory that would be allocated to each application. The upshot of this was that simply adding more RAM would allow more applications to be open at once, but wouldn't allow you, for example, to create a larger image in Photoshop without going into the properties for the Photoshop application and tweaking its RAM allocation. Pre OS-X, even Windows 95 had the edge over the Mac in that respect.