I am an IT nerd by hobby and these days by profession. What money doesn't go to my teeth and other living expenses inevitably goes into my computer.
RAM is your computer's Random Access Memory. There are three major types of memory in your computer - volatile memory, which includes your RAM and your motherboard's L1 and L2 caches, and more permanent Read Only Memory (ROM - yes, the same ROM uses in CD-ROM) and the hybrid long term storage from various flavors of hard drives that can be read to and written to many times.
A RAM upgrade is often the most cost effective (and just plain effective) upgrade you can give to an aging computer. My primary system is just under a year old, and my annual upgrade this year included the major jump from 4 gigabytes of RAM to 16 whopping gigs of RAM, snagged in a firesale off NewEgg last week.
So how do you upgrade your RAM? Well, you can take it to the Geek Squad and have them hem and haw over it for a few hours and then charge you a hundred bucks to put in a thirteen dollar part (hey, just like my auto mechanic!)
Or, you can follow me below the fold and do it yourself in about ten minutes.
The first thing you need to do is figure out what kind of RAM your computer takes. If you're a "not computer person" - never fear! A company that manufactures RAM, Crucial, will let you do a free scan on your computer and then give you some recommendations on what parts you need to replace it.
Go ahead and give that permissions to run - Crucial is a trusted company and there is nothing nasty in there. We use it all the time in my office.
(If you want the full system specs, we recommend using Belarc instead. Crucial only checks your memory.)
The Crucial scan will open up a web page with two important pieces of information: What you currently have installed in your system, and what new parts are guaranteed to be compatible with it.
Last time I ran a scan, Crucial detected that I had four memory slots available, and each slot could take 4 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM. (Most PCs that are out in the wild today will either take DDR2 or DDR3; DDR "1" dates back to the late 90s.) It also told me that my motherboard could accept a range from DDR3 PC 800 to DDR3 PC 12800, 240 pin. (Be careful with pin sizes - 240 PIN is standard desktop RAM, but 200 PIN is used for laptops.)
Two of my slots were occupied. I had two sticks of 2 GB RAM apiece, for a total of four gigabytes of RAM. Now, for everyday computer 4 gigabytes of RAM is plenty, but my motherboard - and thus my system - had the potential capacity for four times as much RAM.
In most cases, you can usually double your available RAM. I'm currently building up a system my office donated to my unemployed room mate (yes, altruism is alive and well) that was a four year old retired medical system. It only has one gigabyte of RAM in it, but the motherboard can take two. Adding a second stick of 1 gigabyte DDR2 RAM (PC 5300) will greatly improve her performance, and the part is $13.99 on NewEgg. I bought it for her and am gifting it to her because I can afford thirteen dollars right now and she can't.
You do need to be careful, however. A lot of flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 are still 32-bit, which has a hard limitation of only being able to recognize 3.5 gigabytes of RAM no matter how much you stuff into your system. If you have a 64-bit operating system, however, you can stuff pretty much as much into your motherboard as the motherboard can handle and the OS can utilize it all.
Once you have established how much RAM you currently have and how much you can add in, you are at a decision point - do I replace it all at once, or do I just get a single identical stick to make a matched set? I am of the general opinion that RAM is like tires - its okay to replace one at a time if a stick goes bad, which is rare, but for the most part it's better off to replace or upgrade in matched sets.
In the case of my room mate's system, her single stick of DDR2 PC 5300 will be augmented with a second identical stick.
In my case, however, I had 4 gigabtytes taking up two out of four slots. If I wanted to max out my system, those two existing sticks would have to go.
Because I am not rich by any stretch, I have to carefully budget for my PC upgrades or else I'll end up spending thousands of dollars every year just because I feel like it. My upgrades for this winter are hard capped at $200 by my husband, and every dollar spent on the RAM is a dollar less I could spend on something else.
So I stalked NewEgg's daily deals, until last week the RAM that was compatible with my system dropped drastically in price. I managed to score 4 sticks of 4 GB DDR3 PC 10666 for $70, with an additional twenty dollar mail in rebate. $50 for 16 gigabytes of RAM? I'll take it!
Then come the hardest part: Sitting on your hands, waiting for NewEgg or Amazon or TigerDirect to send you your new goodies in the mail. Most of them offer cheap or even free shipping. The super saver shipping on my RAM was free from New Egg, and yet it arrived in two business days. Thank you, USPS.
So today was the day of the big upgrade.
Now, installing RAM is probably the easiest thing you can do. You will need:
- Some means of getting inside your computer case. Apple people, sorry, you'll need a tool called a case cracker because Apple doesn't want you to do your own repairs. For everyone else, you'll probably need a Philips screwdriver, or perhaps a TorqX. Or if you're lucky, your PC case is "easy access" and all you need is a thumb and a forefinger to get the screws out.
- Canned air, because the moment you open your case and see all the dust and crap inside you'll want to blow it out.
- An outside area to dust out your computer
- Some means of getting rid of your static discharge. Since I frequently work on PCs, I have a static wrist guard that keeps me grounded against the metal case. If you don't have one of those (and very few non-PC tech people do), then a metal door frame, or even the metal case of the computer itself, should do just fine.
- Your shiny new RAM
Open of your case, dust off the insides, and take a good look inside. If you've never done this before, then the parts may be unfamilar - did you know there was that much empty space inside? Air flow is very important for PCs, so do your best to get out all the dust and crap without touching any of the circuit boards.
Your RAM slots will appear parallel to each other. A RAM stick is about 6 inches long, green, and will be embedded in your motherboard by catches on either side of the stick. Push down the catches at the same time, and your RAM will pop right out like a piece of toast.
Carefully remove the old RAM. Hold it by the edges, like a CD. You can recycle it for free at Best Buy, or eBay it for a couple of bucks if you really want to try.
Go ahead and dust out the area around the RAM now; it's bound to be filthy too.
Now you're ready for the new stuff. Make sure all the catches are depressed. Also note any color coding on your RAM slots - mine had two blue and two black sections. Turns out that if only two banks were occupied, they were supposed to go in the blue slots. A third stick placed in the black slot would not be recognized without its fourth pair, too. (Upgrade in pairs!)
Line up the notch on the bottom of the RAM stick with the notch on the slot. Stick it straight down, and then press firmly on the top edge on either end. The RAM will click right into place, and the catches on either end will automatically pop up.
Do this for any remaining sticks of RAM you have. Give your PC one final dust out, and then seal 'er up.
And now: The moment of truth. When you put everything back together and power on your system again, there are two things that can happen: Either it will boot like normal, in which case you have done well, or it will start beeping in complaint and not boot at all. The latter means you screwed up someplace, and the system will not boot to prevent damage.
Fortunately, the likeliest cause of the Power On Self Test beeps is that you didn't properly shove the RAM in all the way. Open up your case and mush down on the RAM. The catches will make an audible click when they've locked the RAM in place.
If you're still getting POST beeps when you try to boot, you may have ordered, or have been shipped, the wrong part. RAM manufacturers are smart and each stick will be labeled with exactly what it is. If your new RAM says DDR3 and your Crucial scan told you you needed DDR2.... well, time to put your old RAM back in and sheepishly return the part to NewEgg in exchange for the correct pieces.
But if your system boots without any complaints, like mine did, then congratulations! You have upgraded your RAM, and you did it yourself. Your computer has a new lease on life. Go ahead and try to open up ten Excel documents at once while having twenty tabs up in your browser and while watching a DVD in the background. Your system is a lot less likely to choke on its own bits.