Upgrade the RAM

How to decide if a Memory Upgrade is Cost Effective

A memory upgrade is one of the simplest and most cost effective ways to improve your computer's performance, providing that's where the bottleneck is. If you're running with less than 64MB, it's almost definitely going to have a major impact if you upgrade to 256MB. If you're running 128MB, you may see some improvement, particularly if you're running Windows XP. If you already have 256MB or more, I would only upgrade if you have a specific program that is demanding the extra capacity, like speech recognition.

If your PC is more than three years old, you may get into older SDRAM (Sychronous DRAM) or even EDO, but more recent PCs are sold with either DDR SDRAM (Double Data Rate SDRAM, simply called DDR), DDR2 (I'll let you guess what that stands for) or RDRAM on some Intel systems (Rambus proprietary technology). These come in a couple different packages, defined by the number of pins, voltage and capacity. The best way to find out what memory modules are supported by your motherboard is to read the manual. Pulling out an old module and bringing it to a shop with you for comparison will get you something that physically fits, but that doesn't mean the capacity or speed will be supported.

It was never a good gamble to mix different brands of memory on a motherboard, different speeds are right out the window, so it usually makes sense to replace all of your RAM when you do a memory upgrade. I can't tell you how many people who upgrade from 64MB buy a 256MB DIMM for less than $40 and then get all messed up over the fact that their old 64MB module only adds 32MB to the total, or something similar. Don't even try it! Just buy the amount of memory you want to end up with, you'll get better reliability and the best performance your motherboard is capable of. You may need to tweak a CMOS setting or move a motherboard switch or jumper if the new memory is faster than the original module.

The latest Intel chipset for DDR2 does allow you to mix module sizes and still get dual channel performace, such as using two 256 MB DDR2 modules on one channel and a single 512 MB DDR2 module in the other. The two 256 MB modules are interleaved, just like some of the old AT style memory subsystems were. No mixing of DDR and DDR2 is allowed, and RIMM (RDRAM) isn't compatible with either DDR flavor.

Installing memory modules is pretty easy, I think I've only encountered one broken memory socket in my life, and on newer motherboards, it's often possible to install a single bank so you don't need to populate all the slots., The current exception is dual channel RDRAM, which requires matched pieces and continuity modules for empty slots. I have an illustrated page on how to replace RAM here.

What won't a memory upgrade help with? A fragmented hard drive, to start with. A lot of so-called PC experts see a hard drive LED flashing all the time and they assume that the operating system is paging like crazy in virtual RAM to meet program requirements. It's just as likely that the hard drive is fragmented, hasn't been defragged for a long while, so your data is scattered all over the platters and takes a while to gather. It's also possible that your system is dragging and you're running out of memory because you have a virus.

Overall, a RAM upgrade is one of the best $50 gambles you can make on increasing your PC's performance and troubleshooting possible memory problems. The main risk is purchasing a non-returnable module that's incompatible with your system. Web sites like Crucial and Kingston have online tools for helping you pick exactly the right part for brand name PCs and notebooks.

Illustrated guide to replacing RAM