Upgrading RAM

Rob_K

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone can help me- I recently bought a new PC which I use primarily for recording music using Cubase. I run a lot of virtual instruments which are extremely memory-intensive. The PC shipped with 2Gb of DDR2 533Mhz RAM (2x1024Mb). there are two slots for additional RAM. However I'm slightly bewildered by the choice of different types of RAM out there, and I want to make sure I don't buy something that's incompatible with my system.. Does anyone have any advice or possibly a link to a wesite selling the right kind of RAM at a good price?

I'd like to upgrade the system to 4Gb of RAM ideally.

Many thanks in advance

£$&*"($£&(

Crucial is good place. It allows you to search by PC model. It's also a quality product.

https://www.crucial.com/uk

darkcloudi

Crucial would be a good place, I believe you get lifetime warranty on its memory.

If you know your motherboard make and model to find the right memory will be easy with crucial. If you don't know this there is a tool that you can download from there website called "Belarc Advisor" this can help to determine what your PC contains.

Rob_K

Fantastic! Many thanks!

everythingblogcast

Crucial also have this scanner too to scan your computer to see what type of RAM you have installed.

Jeannine

I have just done what the other posters have suggested - used the Crucial site to identify the memory needed, ordered it (it arrived within 3 days) and followed their instructions to install it (successfully!). And I'd never even opened the case of a computer before...:j And a good price too - much cheaper than buying it installed!

rygon

Im suprised you need more than 2gb of ram though...seems a bit hefty. Ive used cubase a few times with 1gig of memory and have had no problems.
Have you tried defraging the pc etc to speed it up

lic

Having costed the price of a replacement laptop for my PC (about £550), I searched the techie thread and discovered the information regarding RAM upgrade. I went to https://www.crucial.com/uk and allowed them to scan my PC. They told me I currently had 256ram, they suggested I upgraded to 1024 ram, by buying 2 units of 512 ram at approx. £60.00 each. Their website also told me that it would be very easy to install the new ram myself.
Being a sceptic and a moneysaver, I elected to pay for one unit only. It arrived the next day, I installed it in about 5 minutes, from start to finish. And blow me it worked!
I was that impressed I have now ordered the second unit of ram and will install that myself also.

So a BIG THANK YOU to all you techie's out there, who through this site have helped a technophobe save the cost of a nes computer(about £330, not bad eh!).

callmelinda

I think there's a massive fear factor when it comes to PCs and upgrading or building them, but it seems quite unwarranted as many of us who have ever built or upgraded seem to find out within minutes of having the correct gear in our hands!

On XP, you can see your RAM amount installed and how much is free: Go to Start / All Programs / Accesories / System Tools / System Information and scroll to see the figures... on mine, I have 1GB installed and 587MB available (not in use yet).

As for PC speed, as well as upgrading with more RAM you can also check what is running at startup since many programs decide to add themselves to startup when there's no need and this takes up resources as they run in the background while you use programs you actually need to use!

(On Xp at least) You can go to Start / Run / type " msconfig " in the box and click OK / go to the Startup tab and you'll see what's ticked to startup with your computer when it boots up. If you know a bunch of programs don't need to startup, you can untick them (but don't mess unless you recognise what they are and definitely know you don't need them to startup when you boot and definitely leave your antivirus and Windows system files ticked!). A basic example of what you could untick would be Winamp, a music player, that only needs to start when you tell it to and need to play music.

If you do untick anything, you'll have to reboot for the changes to take effect and a pop up will come up on the screen after rebooting telling you your configurations have changed - this is normal and you can tick that box and click ok. I recommend googling " msconfig " and look around some sites which explain in better detail before making any changes so you'll have a better knowledge.

As well as this, you can choose for the best system performance for your PC (which normally cuts out the fancier looks of XP) by going to My Computer / View System Information / Advanced / Performance Settings / tick "Adjust for best performance" and save that setting. This is particularly useful on PCs or laptops running very little RAM - probably notice a difference if you only have 192/256MB of RAM I would imagine. You can always revert back to the original settings if you do not like the look of the PC after the change but it will save some RAM!