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A Consumers Guide To Buying Computer Memory What You Should Know.
Kenilworth Computer
Repairs Mobile Computer Maintenance,
Repair, and I.T Desktop Support Services for Kenilworth, Warwick, Royal
Leamington Spa, Rugby, Stratford on Avon, Coventry, Solihull and environs.
What is Computer Memory / RAM ?
Computer memory
is often the most overlooked part of a computer system. To little memory
will create a huge bottleneck that will slow down everything from
opening your favourite application to browsing the Internet. Computer
memory or RAM (Random Access Memory) is used for short terms storage. It
is different from hard drives and flash memory in that when the machine
is rebooted everything in RAM is lost. Computer Solutions can supply and fit RAM for most makes of PC.
These days RAM is measured in Gb or
Gigabytes. A Gigabyte is equal to 1024Mb or Megabytes. You should expect
your new PC to have at least 2Gb memory and in some cases 4Gb as
standard. 32 bit operating systems like Windows can only utilise up to
4Gb of memory.
However with the advent of the 64 bit
versions of operating systems, up to 128Gb of RAM can be used. Some
manufacturers are shipping their new systems with 6Gb and sometimes 8Gb
of RAM as standard. It is therefore true that you can not have too much
RAM memory.
What is DDR, DDR2 & DDR3 memory?
The term DDR stands for double data
rate. This means that the memory is read twice on each refresh cycle in
effect allowing the memory speed to be doubled. The current standard is
DDR3 which means that we are currently on the 3rd generation of double
data rate memory. DDR3 cannot be used with DDR2 or DDR. They will not
phsically fit into the motherboard.
What about memory speed?
Memory speed is usually measured in
MHz or Megahertz. Older memory will run at 400Mhz, 533MHz or 667MHz The
newer DDR3 will operate up to about 1600MHz. The motherboard manual will
indicate which type of memory the board can safely operate with. As a
rule of thumb it is always best to have matched pairs of memory
purchased together. You can in some cases mix and match two different
memory speeds but the motherboard will detect this and run at the speed of the slower memory.
Most computer memory manufacturers
like Micron, formerly called Crucial and Kingston memory have
configurators on their websites to determine which memory should be used
in your system. In out experience however these utilities often make
mistakes and do not read the number of memory slots available correctly.
While they are useful they cannot therefore be always relied upon.
Computer Solutions are happy to help with all you requirements and can help with your memory problems. We've been building computers for around 25 years.
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