Desktop Ram

wafmoo

Apologies if it sounds a daft question -

My Daughter has a desktop Pc given to her by my SIL. It only has 496mb of Ram, so runs quite slowly and the processor is pentium3 1.00ghz.

Other than taking the cover off, is there any way of checking what type of memory I would need to buy to upgrade?

boxst

You can go to http://crucial.com/ and download their memory scanner.

NeverAgain_2

Try this memory scanner from Crucial:

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/drammemory.aspx

Crucial have a good name in this area, so I would go with their recommendation.

wafmoo

Thanks, i'll have a look.

John_Gray

A 1 GHz Pentium III is not going to be a fast box, even with another 512 MB of memory - but it may be OK for your daughter's use - it should certainly run faster with a total of 1 GB of memory (assuming it's Windows XP).

Pay particular attention to how many memory slots are on the motherboard. (The Crucial program will tell you this.) If there are no empty slots you are going to have to buy more memory than you thought you needed.

For example, if you have only two memory slots and each holds a 256 MB module, then you will have to remove one and add (say) a new 1GB module, OR remove both and add 2 x 512 MB modules - with the correct characteristics (which Crucial will also tell you). There are other possibilities...

If you like, give the make and exact model of the PC, and people will make suggestions!

closed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem

SteveJH200

As John Gray said - it won't be a fast machine - I'm guessing that it takes a max 1Gb SDRAM in two slots - 512Mb per slot or 4 x 256Mb SDRAM. Most of the old P3 computers used these combinations. The Crucial scan will confirm. If you don't need to be tied to XP then it will run Ubuntu or similar quite well.