My son's PC has just died, we've dismantled it and he has given me the two Ram sticks. One is 2 gig, and the other is 4 gig. Can I just plug them into my PC? Mine has 4 gig.

TIA.

Cheers, Trev.

Only if it is the right type / speed.

The ram sticks you have been given should say what they are on them and compare this to what is in your machine. If one is DDR2 and the other DDR3 for example then no.

Run the crucial memory scanner

http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/

It downloads a small file that scans your computer.

It will then tell you what memory you have installed and what else will fit.

If necessary google the numbers on the RAM your son have given you and compare to crucial - Or post some detail on here - Just don't expect a sober response tonight!

Edited 31 December, 201213 yr by Web Ferret

Note that the crucial scanner is not foolproof.

crack open your PC, look for the similar chips. Pull your old ones out, new ones go in. Now there are 4 things to watch out for with this plan

A ) speed. Generally if you stick RAM rated for a higher speed that your machine can cope with then the RAM just runs at whatever speed your machine can deal with so you should be OK but its a bit of a waste. Chances are that it isnt the super high speed stuff anyway, the only people with that tend to be enthusiasts, system builders or gamers etc, none of whom would buy a PC with unmatched RAM like that :p (computer building 101, both RAM modules should be the same size, access latency and clock speed, they wouldn't run a 4 and a 2)

B ) type. Some older machines will use DDR2 RAM, newer ones use DDR3. It will either say on the stick which it is OR the alternate is when you look along the row of contacts on one side there is a little notch. DDR1, 2 and 3 all have that notch in a different location so it is not possible to insert DDR2 into a DDR3 slot or vice versa. You should be able to take 1 module out of your machine and compare it to one of your sons modules to see if they are matching DDR types. On the subject of type, laptop RAM is different from desktop RAM, the sticks are different lengths entirely (laptop is about half the length) and they are not compatible or usable with adaptors either.

C ) Number of slots on your motherboard. Not a massive problem. If you have 4gb of RAM then there are 2 possibilities here. You either have a motherboard with 2 slots or 4 slots. If its 2 slots (most common on pre built PC's and MicroATX PC's) then you probably have 2 sticks each 2gb in size. If you have 4 slots then chances are its 4 sticks each 1gb in size, slightly rarer is 2 sticks of 2 and 2 empty slots in which case your lucky. If its 2 sticks of 2 then just swap one for the 4gb stick and you now have 6gb of RAM. If its 4 1's, swap 2 of your old sticks for your sons and congrats, 2 + 4 + 1 + 1, 8gb. If your even luckier and its 4 slots and 2 are empty, then you now have 10gb, congrats.

D) brings us onto the last point. 64 bit OS vs 32 bit OS. Do you know if your computer is running a 32 bit or 64 bit operating system? If its 32 bit then just leave your ram alone, your already at the max limit. a 32 bit operating system can only physically see 4gb of your RAM across ALL modules fitted (and that includes those on graphics and sound cards too), it will just ignore any excess.

Thanks very much for the input guys. Mine had one stick of 4gig DDR3. I also had one spare slot, but not anymore. Son's memory was DDR3, so 4gig of that is now sitting along side mine, Looked in properties in My Computer and its' telling me I've got 8gig, so hopefully it'll all be fine. Thank you once again.

Incidently, my machine is 64 bit, and so was my son's. His machine was a gaming machine, although not brilliant by all accounts, but at least it was not overclocked.

Thanks Guys.

If it wasn't running a 64 bit OS then it wouldn't have recognised the additional memory. Can't remember what a 32 bit OS maxes out at but it's somewhere round the 4gb mark.

**D'oh, should have read all of the post previous to yours. Sorry for the duplicate info**

Edited 1 January, 201313 yr by Schern

Its actually about 3.3Gb ish but you can modify the boot.ini file so that even a 32bit ops system can access the full amount of ram.

As people have said above its pointless putting extra ram in your computer unless you have a 64bit O.S. which can handle upto 137Gb ish of ram. Also you have to consider that in the PC's dying moments it could have caused issues with the ram its self which in turn could damage your own P.C it might have even been the root cause of the failure. I wouldn't risk it to be honest unless you can test the ram first on a PC that isn't critical. Its always better to have parity in Ram although some systems dont require parity so it could have worked perfectly well in your sons PC and not work in yours depending on motherboard. I think IIRC the Double data rate of the DDR wont work unless you have the modules installed in pairs. Although its ages since i done any hardware system builds so could be talking rubbish.

Doh just done the same read the last post and not your original one so please ignore the 64bit coment as you have already confirmed its X64

No worries Lads, I'm just grateful so many people took to trouble to advise me, thank you all :clap:

Its actually about 3.3Gb ish but you can modify the boot.ini file so that even a 32bit ops system can access the full amount of ram.

Well the 32 bit address space caps out at just under 4gb so even a boot.ini file shouldnt be able to go beyond that although I think you can over-ride the fact it totals it across all RAM sources including GPU's etc.

64bit can go far beyond 130gb though :p infact 130 would fit nicely into a 38bit address space. Of course nobody needs that much ram. Hell, most people wont fill 4. I only occasionally hit 4 but then I play quite a lot of games on the higher settings. Wouldnt mind getting 8gb, skyrim tends to mess up a little when it starts paging memory to the hard disk. Generally the only people who will need 130 probably have a super computer or 2 lying around :p

Edited 1 January, 201313 yr by 6677

Generally the only people who will need 130 probably have a super computer or 2 lying around :p

At least today. It wasn't so long ago that we measured the amount of onboard RAM in home computers in 10's of kbytes so I'm sure it's only a matter of time

FWIW, IBM's Watson computer that took on the Jeopardy Challenge had a meagre 16 Terabytes of RAM

Chris

Generally the only people who will need 130 probably have a super computer or 2 lying around :p

We have three servers at work with 128GB of RAM in each one, they are however running VMWare and across all three servers we have around 60 Windows servers virtualised.

64bit can go far beyond 130gb though :p infact 130 would fit nicely into a 38bit address space. Of course nobody needs that much ram. Hell, most people wont fill 4. I only occasionally hit 4 but then I play quite a lot of games on the higher settings. Wouldnt mind getting 8gb, skyrim tends to mess up a little when it starts paging memory to the hard disk. Generally the only people who will need 130 probably have a super computer or 2 lying around :p

Not sure where i got 137gb from think i was thinking of old HDD limitations 128gb seams a more logical cap but seams you theroretically can get about 16 exobytes of ram to work although id like to see the box that houses all those modules.

This might be helpfull for anyone wondering : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx

Wow, they raised the limits for windows 8.

4gb on x86 as with the 32bit address space limit.

128gb on x64 windows 8.

512 on x64 windows 8 pro and enterprise edition :p

4 terabytes on some of the server versions.

id like to see the box that houses all those modules.

Windows does actually support multiple CPU's. Not just multiple cores but 5 or 6 physical CPU's on a shared address bus is perfectly acceptable, I believe the non server versions are capped at 2 physical + its cores, server is whatever you can get hold of. Its possible to have rack server units treated as individual nodes of one larger system so it wouldnt be one box but an entire cabinet or possibly even a row of cabinets. You can buy eATX motherboards for twin CPU usage, some rack units have more. Its specialist hardware either way. Reminds me, I was gonna get plan 9 running on my old pentium 4 machine at some point (that can be set up as a full distributed operating system running as one entity across multiple networked machines, and its open source :p)

Edited 2 January, 201313 yr by 6677

Wow, they raised the limits for windows 8.

4gb on x86 as with the 32bit address space limit.

128gb on x64 windows 8.

512 on x64 windows 8 pro and enterprise edition :p

4 terabytes on some of the server versions.

Windows does actually support multiple CPU's. Not just multiple cores but 5 or 6 physical CPU's on a shared address bus is perfectly acceptable, I believe the non server versions are capped at 2 physical + its cores, server is whatever you can get hold of. Its possible to have rack server units treated as individual nodes of one larger system so it wouldnt be one box but an entire cabinet or possibly even a row of cabinets. You can buy eATX motherboards for twin CPU usage, some rack units have more. Its specialist hardware either way. Reminds me, I was gonna get plan 9 running on my old pentium 4 machine at some point (that can be set up as a full distributed operating system running as one entity across multiple networked machines, and its open source :p)

Yes i know this is how google first started, i think you can do a similar thing with the ps3.

P.S. The box comment was intended as a bit of a joke :-)

Oh and i know about Motherboards with multiple CPU's mine is currently running a pair of XEONS. ;-)