How and Where to buy Computer Memory (RAM)

No matter what you use your laptop or desktop computer for, it can usually benefit from additional memory. The more RAM you have in your computer, the easier it is to have multiple applications running at once, meaning your computer does not have to use the pagefile on your hard disk as much, so your computer runs faster and smoother.

So once you have decided to upgrade your RAM, your next decisions are,

– How much RAM do I get?

– What type of RAM do I get?

– Where do I get good quality memory from?

How much RAM you get depends on how many spare memory slots you have and how much RAM can go in each memory slot. I usually open up a computer and see how many slots it has and how many are free. But the amount and type of RAM that can go in each slot depends on the exact make and model of the computer or motherboard.

Use the Crucial Memory Advisor tool to work this out. Here is the Crucial Site in the UK and here’s the Crucial Site in the US.

Crucial are a highly recommended supplier of all kinds of computer memory. In fact, that’s where we buy all of our memory upgrades from ourselves.

Using the Crucial Memory Advisor tool, select the Make and Model of your computer from the dropdown list.

If you have an unbranded computer, you may need to use the Make and Model of the motherboard.

When you complete the search, you will see information about your computer and a number of suitable memory products.

For example, I searched for a Dell Latitude D620, and as you can see, the Crucial Memory Advisor tool told me that there are two memory slots in the laptop.

Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300 memory sticks, with a maximum size of 2GB per memory slot.

In this case, DDR2 is the type of memory. It refers to the memory technology, but importantly, it also indicates the size and shape of memory stick that will fit in your laptop.

PC2-5300 is a measure of the speed of memory that can be used in the laptop. Some computers can make use of a couple of different memory speeds, and faster is generally better, but it is a good tip to make sure all of your memory sticks are running at the same speed, to make sure they are fully compatible with each other and to get the best performance out of them.

So if I had 2 x 512MB RAM sticks in my Dell Latitude D620 laptop and I wanted to max out the memory, I would buy two sticks of 2GB RAM, remove the smaller memory sticks that the laptop came with, and install the new ones. Job done.

Hopefully this guide helped you in choosing the right memory for your RAM upgrade project.

 

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