PC2-4200 or PC2-5300

[Tom_ZeCat]

I have a debranded HP Pavilion that I bought with no OS. I put Ubuntu Linux 8.04 on it. Now I've put in an additional hard drive and installed Windows XP Professional. I'm suping it up.

It has 4 memory slots. I pulled out a memory chip to see what kind it was. It's PC2-4200. There are two 512 MB chips occupying two slots, giving me 1 GB of memory. I want to upgrade to 3 gig.

When I look in System Information in XP, I get this info:

System Manufacturer:
HP Pavilion 061
System Model:
RF167AV-ABA a1650e

I imagine this means this PC was an HP Pavilion a1650e before its debranding. When I look up memory on crucial.com for it, i get this page:
http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...enter%20a1650e

It's listing PC2-5300 for memory, with a max of 1 gig per slot and 4 slots. I'm surprised it's not listing PC2-4200 as an option because I thought that memory type was compatible with 5300. What I'm wondering is if I can get two 1 gig 5300 chips and put them in and they'll work fine with the two half gig 4200 chips, giving me 3 gig. My other option would be to remove the 4200s and buy 3 1 gig PC2-5300s, leaving one slot empty.

In the future I intend to bring the memory up to 4 gig, but not just yet. My Windows XP version is 32 bit and therefore cannot recognize 4 gig. My Ubuntu Linux is 64 bit, however, and can. In the future I'll upgrade to either Win XP 64 bit or Win 7 64.

So can I safely put in the two 5300s or should I get three of them and take out my 4200s. Or should I look elsewhere and see if I can find 2 1 gig PC2-4200s?

And I have interpreted my computer's model number from the System Information right, haven't I?

[The Wise Monkey]

Everything looks right so far - good sleuthing!

Higher speed RAM will work fine in your build, and at the rated speed, if you put the two 1GB sticks in the correct slots. They should be a different colour on the motherboard to separate the two pairs (usually slot 1&3, 2&4 are the pairs).