3 RAM slots

[Tomo]

I came home from uni the other day and was horrified to find that the pc at home has almost crawled to a halt. Talked to my parents about the possibility of an upgrade and had a look inside.

At the moment the mobo has 3 RAM slots, of which two are occupied with 512mb. I was wondering what is the best thing to do here? Buy a single 1gb for the last slot? Or replace the two existing dimms with two 1gb?

[chunkylover53]

1) Need more details on the PC. If it's store bought, mfr & model would help because...
2) It depends on the mobo. It might have a memory max, and we would want to give you advice on the type of memory as well.
3) Might not be memory, might be Spyware or any number of OS or software issues. Maybe the rents were using your computer and inadvertantly downloaded something that's dragging it down.

Sight unseen, though? Probably 2x1gb for the two slots that are currently occupied, and leave the third one empty.

[shyster]

I agree with Chunky if this is a sudden thing, it probably means you have somekind of unwanted things running on your computer. The best thing to do if you cannot or do not want to reformat the entire computer would be to download some anti-virus software and have it check your computer.

If the problems persist then yeah as Chunky said 2x1 is probably your best option if your computer can handle it and only after you have given us the information needed to see if it can handle it.

[Barrister73]

to rephrase the masters;

If it is store-bought, check the manual for what its max RAM is. My girlfriend's former top-of-the-line model had three slots, but could take a max of less than 1 gig. I put in more, and it wouldn't read it all (much as Vista 32 cannot read more than 3 gig). Check your board and OS specs before spending money on RAM.

MRR

[partyman97_3]

Maybe the easiest way to check the memory type and maximum amount would be to run the memory scanner tool on the crucial web site. This a a very useful tool.

http://www.crucial.com

[RickyTick]

Maybe the easiest way to check the memory type and maximum amount would be to run the memory scanner tool on the crucial web site. This a a very useful tool.

http://www.crucial.com

Excactly.