Figuring Out Your Type of Ram and Upgrading Your Ram

Often times it's hard to explain exactly what a certain part of the computer does, but below I have a bit of an analogy to explain the different parts of the computer and how they work together. Hopefully this will help you a few of the different parts of the computer.

Imagine a cubicle with a desk, an office worker, and a filing cabinet. The desk is like RAM (Random Access Memory), the office worker is like the CPU(Central Processing Unit) and the filing cabinet is like the hard drive. The office worker(CPU) must interact with their desk(RAM) and filing cabinet (Hard Drive). If something is on the desk(RAM) it is much quicker to find than if it filed away in the filing cabient(Hard Drive). The desk (RAM) allows the office worker(CPU) to find data more quickly than having to slog through the filing cabinet (Hard Drive). The more RAM you have the bigger desk the office worker has and the more items that can be stored on the desk instead of in the filing cabinet.

Taking that analogy one step further, let's try to understand how upgrading your RAM can help you. Imagine you are an office worker and you always are taking things in and out of your filing cabinet because everything won't fit on your desk. Upgrading your RAM is a bit like upgrading to a bigger desk that can hold more stuff at once.

In this way the desk is bigger so the office worker can look at more stuff at once and doesn't have to keep filing stuff in and out of the filling cabinet. This helps with bigger applications or projects because the office worker can hold all the application or project files on their desk at once. Imagine if you could only take out a few of the files out of a project file at a time. For Example, say you wanted to look at page 27, but it wasn't on your desk and you had to put page 32 back into the filing cabinet to pull it out. Halfway through looking at page 27 you realise you needed page 32 again and needed to pull it back out. The CPU now has to request that page from the harddrive and if you are switching pages a lot this happens quite often. Imagine if you could access pages on your desk 500 times faster than finding them in a filing cabinet how much more productive you could be. Well upgrading your RAM is exactly like that because RAM is up to 500 times faster than your harddrive.

There are a few reasons to avoid upgrading the harddrive (filing cabinet) or CPU (office worker). If you want to upgrade your CPU this may require upgrading the motherboard as well. These are the two most expensive pieces of your computer and you might have to upgrade your RAM in the process. Also, upgrading the motherboard of your computer, while easy, isn't something most people are comfortable doing. RAM on the other hand is very easy to upgrade and relatively inexpensive. You can also upgrade your harddrive, but like almost all filing cabinets they are basically the same on the inside so unless you're running out of room a fancier one that opens a little faster isn't going to make your computer run that much faster and like the CPU a harddrive upgrade can become rather expensive as well.

The best way to find out what RAM you need if SDRAM, SODIMM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3 has your head spinning is to go to the system scanning tool. The Crucial System Scanner takes the guesswork out of upgrading your memory. This is high quality RAM at discount prices. Don't buy cheap knock off discount RAM! Use this tool and get high quality inexpensive RAM.

Laptop Memory Types

SODIMM are often used in places where physical size of memory is important. To the left you can see an example of 200-pin DDR SODIMM. For more information check out SODIMM.

Desktop Memory Types

DDR (DOUBLE DISK RATE) RAM as seen on the right has 184 pins. This separates it from DDR2 and DDR3 RAM. DDR Ram also increases the bandwidth available over Single Data Rate SDRAM by double. For more information check out DDR.

DDR2 main benefit is the ability to operate the external data bus twice as fast as DDR SDRAM. DDR2 memory at the same clock speed as DDR will provide the same bandwidth but markedly higher latency, providing worse performance. Please see the picture of DDR2 240 pin RAM on the right. For more information check out DDR2.

DDR3 sticks of RAM have 240 pins, the same number as DDR2, and are the same size, but are incompatible with DDR2. For more information see DDR3.

The first step in installing RAM is to shut down your computer. If you leave the power cable plugged in and are always touching a metal part of the computer case you will be completely grounded out. This will prevent static electricity from shocking your motherboard.

Once you have shut down the computer it is now time to remove the case. You may need to pull a latch or undo a few screws to remove your case. If you have any questions please see your manual or google it.

If you are replacing memory in a laptop computer you will need to insert the RAM stick at a 30 degree angle and then push down firmly to pop it into place. If you are installing it in a desktop it needs to be installed parallel to the motherboard. Now line up the notch in RAM stick with the place in the slot on the motherboard where it needs to go. In either case you may need to push firmly to get it to completely seated correctly. Also, make sure the retaining clips are closed completely on each side of the stick of RAM.

Next leave the cover off and turn your computer back on. Assuming this is a windows PC right click on My Computer and then go to properties. From here you should see in the lower right hand corner you should see the amount of RAM you installed. This amount might be slightly different than the amount you installed because some of it maybe being used for your integrated video card. If you don't see a similar amount to what you expected you may need to re-seat your RAM by taking it out of the slot and putting it back in.

If all is going well put the case back on and you have now upgraded your ram and it really was that easy!