Saturday 24 October 2009

Upgrading RAM on Your Home Computer

Upgrading RAM on Your Home Computer 


RAM is essential for several different applications, but more so for some than others. For example encoding video would take up a large amount of RAM as it is RAM intensive. Database applications also use up a lot of RAM due to the amount of data involved. Surfing the web and using word or powerpoint for example would not use much RAM at all. The query you need to ask is do you need the upgraded RAM. If you don’t then save your money. If you do read on.

RAM is an acronym for Random Access Memory. RAM is an important part of any computer method. RAM is memory to hold frequently used bits of data for the computer to access in an efficient manner. Accessing RAM as opposed to the hard disk is a lot not as hard and quicker for a computer.

One time you pick the size of the RAM you need you have to pick the type of RAM. There's two main types of RAM. DDR and DDR2. What you have to take in to account when buying the RAM is which type your motherboard will support. Most new Intel motherboards will take DDR2 as this is the latest technology. At present AMD boards are not compatible with DDR2 so if you have an AMD board then you will have to buy DDR RAM.

There's several options to pick from when upgrading RAM. The first is the size of RAM you need to purchase. They come in 256mb, 512mb, 1gig and 2gig varieties. as a fast reference 1gig of RAM will be for most things you need to do, 2gig might be overkill.

There you have it, improving the speed of your computer by upgrading the RAM is simple and can be effective.

One time you buy the RAM then you have to install it. Installing RAM is simple. Firstly you need to remove the case in order to be able to get to the motherboard. One time this is done you simple need to put the RAM in to one of the free slots on your motherboard. Something to take note of would be the particular slot you put the RAM in. Some motherboards can be fussy so read the user manual of your motherboard before upgrading the RAM.