Ram Question

[Shruikan2]

I have an HP Pavilion with 80GB hard drive. The motherboard is an ASUS P4G533-LA microATX type motherboard. Not sure on how much RAM the motherboard can support. Right now my system max is 1024 MB of RAM with 2 card slots. If my motherboard can support say 4GB of RAM how do I increase my system max beyond 1024 MBs to 2048 MBs(1GB per slot)? Is it possible or do I have to buy a new motherboard that I know will support 4 GBs or more? Also does the size of the hard drive affect how much RAM you can add to your PC?

[shyster]

The easiest way to find out how much RAM your computer can support would be to either call HP and ask them yourself, or post your exact computer number so that someone hear could look up the specs.

Failing that there are software programs you can run to detect your hardware, and if your hardware is known sometimes you can find its specs that way also. The problem with that is that most of the big guys, Dell, hp, Compaq, etc., usually use their own cheap ass low end parts.

Once you find out how much RAM your computer can handle you have two options really. If your computer has four slots for RAM instead of two then you could increase max RAM to 3gb. It is unlikely your motherboard let alone your actual operating system can support more than that since 64 bit systems require 2gb as a minimum amount. The other thing to consider if you do have four slots is that the RAM you put in might have a higher clock speed than your current RAM which would mean you are losing efficiency with your RAM because your new better RAM will clock down to the slower speed.

The other option would just be to use the 2x1gb sticks of RAM that have a higher clock speed.

Buying a new motherboard may or may not work since companies use OEM versions of operating systems which usually key in on the original motherboard they are installed in. This means that your computer may work better but you might not be able to run windows since it would be telling microsoft that you are using a different computer.

Finally hard drive size has nothing to do with RAM. It is not unfeasible that someone could stick a hard drive (80gb) or smaller on a brand new computer that has a motherboard that can support up to 8gb. The only thing having a hard drive does for your computer in a way related to RAM is that it can run virtual memory which allows your OS to eat hard drive space temporarily to create fake RAM.

[Shruikan2]

Cool, thanks. The max my motherboard can handle is 1GB =P. This is good enough to run most games such as WoW and Everquest 1 so it will be good enough for me. Going to up HD to 250GBs tho. 80 isn't cutting it.