I've decided I'd like to upgrade the ram in my computer. I am surprised that this question hasn't been asked already and that there aren't any web pages on this subject, because it seems rather confusing.

I'm mainly wondering about compatibility. I know that differing clock speeds will work, but will any clock speed work? And can different types of ram such as SDRAM and DDR SDRAM work together?

Any other tips you can give me would be appreciated.

Thanks.

No, you cannot have SDR or DDR on the same board at the same time. If you like to upgrade you need to find out what ram your motherboard was designed to work with. Depending on the age of your motherboard it may be better to go for a new motherboard so you can take advantage of the faster ram that is now available. Having different speed ram will work together but will slow the faster ram down to slower ram speed, i think to my knowledge anyway. Mixing different sizes of ram will usually work but can lead to problems, boards can become unstable, freezes and reboots.

First find out what the make and model of your motherboard is, thats usually easy if you built it or you look on the motherboard inside the PC case. If it is an OEM product likea Gateway or a Dell. Go here: http://www.crucial.com/ and input your Manufactuere and model and it will give you the specs you should lookf for.


Crucial is highly regarded. Some people will say the "high-end" manufacturers are better but when they send you a dead RAM stick you'll think different.


--tarballedtux


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Rant Continuation:

I was building a PC for a friend and I had the hardest time getting the OS installed (windows XP Pro). It kept saying "corrupted file this" and "this file doesn't match that" Sounds like a media problem right? No!, one of his RAM sticks DEAD. Literally dead(No he didn't take 9mm to it.) I (on a whim) slapped in memtest86. Literally in in the 5 seconds 10,000 errors. 50,xxx at the end. Ouch! This was a Corsair XMS brand stick.

I personally like ddr 3200 best. and its compatible with most mobos and its fast. i was able to put linux on it just fine. good luck!

Thanks for the link to Crucial. Apparently my computer will only take ram with "a specific type of chips." Either they're just trying to make me buy from them, or it's about time to buy a new computer.

Say, do you think a live distro (Morphix) would work with only 64 MB of ram? It has XFce for the WM and Firebird for the browser. I tired it on my other computer, which also has 64 MB of ram, but it has a Linux swap partition on the hard drive.

And what would happen if it did run out of memory with Morphix? A simple "your're our of memory" message, right?

It should use the swap partition as virtual RAM.



--tarballedtux