different coloured RAM slots
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Category: Other Chat
Forum Name: Computer Talk
Forum Description: Help and discussion about your manly PC or girly Mac
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=42818
Printed Date: 26 March 2026 at 11:31pm
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Topic: different coloured RAM slots
Posted By: tweeter box
Subject: different coloured RAM slots
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 3:50pm
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why they like this on motherboards?? ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Replies:
Posted By: LondonTowers
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 4:54pm
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on modern boards they generally tend to relate to dual or tripple channel mode.
IE on my mobo, i have 2x green (channel A) and 2x orange (channel B) sockets (dimms)
if you for instance buy a dual chanel memory kit of 2x sticks of 2gb, your first stick would go into the lowest DIMM on channel A, and the second stick would go in the lowest DIMM of channel B, EG
DIMM 1 (Chan A) <-- 1st stick
DIMM 2 (Chan A)
DIMM 3 (Chan B) <-- 2nd stick
DIMM 4 (Chan B)
in this scenario dimm2 and dimm4 would be left empty, and if you have a second dual channel memory kit, youd put them in there.
thats normally the case for different colored sockets, it can differ, if you post the mother board make and model# ill check it out for you.
Of course with a tripple channel motherboard youd have the following arrangement
DIMM1 (Chan A)
DIMM2 (Chan A)
DIMM3 (Chan B)
DIMM4 (Chan B)
DIMM5 (Chan C)
DIMM6 (Chan C)
and you would insert your memory as before, but it would be three sticks so youd use dimm1,3 and 5 :)
hope this helps :D
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Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 6:57pm
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cheers for the explanation, mine must be dual channel then
ive got 2 stick that are the same and another 2 sticks which are slightly diff, will this matter?
will put up mobo details tomorrow  ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: JohnnyPyro
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 7:04pm
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always best to have the same memory but as long as you have 2 pairs that are matching it wont make much diff on a normal pc ... but put 1 pair in slot 1&3 and the other pair in slot 2&4 ------------- Pyrotechnics... its not rocket science, well.... actually it is !! :o) Powered by MC2 & XTA |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 7:11pm
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cheers for that, read somewhere bout setting the RAM in bios, any ideas bout that? ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: JohnnyPyro
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 7:21pm
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TBH mate it only really matters if you use a gaming rig and then you would need all 4 matching but from experience pc's tend to run faster on 2 larger dimms of memory rather than 4 smaller ------------- Pyrotechnics... its not rocket science, well.... actually it is !! :o) Powered by MC2 & XTA |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 7:43pm
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nah not doin gaming, running Traktor of it ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: JohnnyPyro
Date Posted: 06 September 2010 at 11:19pm
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just out of curiosity .. how much ram you putting in and what version of windows as XP only supports upto 4 gig and if you have a graphics card that memory is taken into acount too ------------- Pyrotechnics... its not rocket science, well.... actually it is !! :o) Powered by MC2 & XTA |
Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 12:32am
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Re: " read somewhere bout setting the RAM in bios, any ideas bout that?"
You should find that the RAM is 'auto detected' by the Bios, however if you change the amount of RAM, the Bios might ask for a re-boot at start-up after the change. Does that with all my PC's 
Mik ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 10:52am
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ok so ive opened up the PC and here are the mobo & Ram details:
motherboard: ASUS P4P800-VM
ram: 2 x HYNIX HY5DU12822CTP-D43 IN SLOTS DIMM B1 & B2 (B1 = blue, B2 = black)
2 x UNBRANDED (trying to fing info on em now) ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 11:12am
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ok so ive got 2 x sticks of ram that i cant identify, all thats written on the actual module bits is 64x8ddr 9 0921
any help to identify em guys? ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 11:54am
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have a look in the Motherboard Manual, if you don't have a copy of this you should be able to download it from the ASUS website, together with any window$ hardware drivers you might need.
Obviously what you have is a DDR type SIMM, what isn't clear is the clock frequency. I suspect that your Motherboard supports DDR2 types though. There is something about the relationship between the '64x8' in terms of it's capacity but can't instantly remember what that is. The Manual will tell you what type of Ram and the clock rates that are supported by your motherboard. So long as the SIMMS fit the sockets and the Motherboard supports DDR then you may be OK to use them. The System Bios should 'auto detect' the RAM clock frequency so you can then find out what 'speed' the RAM you have is. Do check the Motherboard Manual first though! If you are still stuck or uncertain about this then look at: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/memory-pcandlaptop/ where you can buy reasonable cost new RAM to match your Motherboard - have found the sales people at Novatech very helpful on the Phone so well worth calling them when you have the MB manual and can tell them what RAM types it says in it. Hope this assists Mik ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 11:58am
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cheers for that Mick, ok sor far ive checked each stick of RAM individually and they all work, according to the Hynix website the RAM is 512 but windows is detecting each of the sticks as 1gb, any ideas why?
also is there somewhere in windows where i can identify the unbranded RAM? ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 12:10pm
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OK if you are getting an error in identifying the RAM capacity then there is a problem possibly related to the difference between using only one slot and the 2 expected by the MB?
Yes 64x8 = 512 so that makes sense that you have 512Mb SIMMs 512's are quite old in the scheme of things, but it may be that Window$ is detecting all of your RAM as a single block perhaps? Unfortunately I'm nor a Window$ person, Linux these days!, so when assembling PC's I use the Bios for all of this rather than rely on installed Operating Systems... What does the Bios say you have as the detected RAM? ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 12:27pm
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in the bios im getting:
Pentium P4 CPU 3.4ghz, system memory 2040mb ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 12:51pm
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OK, Have found what appears to be the ASUS Support page for you at:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=lWkFWt6I1Nykye1b&content=download you should find many answers here, it states it supports DDR Ram, at 3 different clock rates, which I'm sure is what you have - with all 4 SIMMS fitted at 512Mb each then you have 2048 MB or 2 Gb So i you have all 4 SIMMS in place, they should be properly working - just make certain each type of SIMM is in the same 'colour' socket. The MB info from ASUS states: Dual channel memory architecture 4 x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 4GB PC3200/PC2700/PC2100 non-ECC DDR SDRAM memory so looks like you could upgrade to 4 1GB DDR PC3200 SIMMs for maximum performance if you want to! Hope this assists Mik ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 1:12pm
 cheers fella, much appreciated ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 1:19pm
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just a final point, often you need the 'memory test' function enabled in the Bios for it to detect changes in how much system memory is present and this might also be why you are getting 512Mb reported as 2GB if this option isn't enabled.....
Always difficult to describe these things in text form, but ever so easy and quick if the PC is on the bench in front of me! Mik ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: LondonTowers
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 1:53pm
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i agree with mik, i work in tech support, albeit 3rd line, i do occasionally have to deal with calls from people. and trying to describe jumper locations, memory slots etc is a nightmare, the ammount of time i just get them to take a picture of whatever it is they are trying to fix and i draw all over it in paint with where things need to go and what to do etc.
with regards to miks comment about upgrading to 4x 1gb sticks of RAM, this is possible, although if you choose to do this, your windows operating system (if 32bit) will only detect approx 3.6gb of ram, its complicated as to why, but has alot to do with 32-bit addressing etc, but wayyy above what you need to know.
Regarding johnnys comment about GFX memory being taken into account is correct, so for example, if i have a 32-bit operating system, 4gb of RAM and a 1gb 'dedicated' graphics card, the system would only 'see' between 2.4gig and 3gig of actual RAM. although in reality, it would address upto about 3.2gig due to the likelyhood of you runnig your gfxcard at 100% useage 24/7.
If you need any more help with things such as this just throw me a PM. I tend to deal with this stuff all day.
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Posted By: audiomik
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 2:15pm
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Re: "your windows operating system (if 32bit) will only detect approx 3.6gb of ram,"
a while ago there used to be a really useful utility program called QEMM which ran from boot with a command in 'config.sys' - it accessed as much RAM as the system had for the OS - MS DOS or Window$ isn't there a more up to date version of something similar? Mik ------------- Warning! May contain Nuts plus springs, washers, screws, etc, etc. |
Posted By: tweeter box
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 3:34pm
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cheers guys for the help havent got a graphics card installed in any of the slots, im just using the onboard graphics, got 2 of the RAMS in so that 2gb, which im hoping will be more than adequate for running traktor alone
turned out one of the sticks was faulty so ive decided to take the other matching stick out aswell n just stick with the 2gb ------------- PRECISION SOUND SYSTEM. Feeding the peoples needs for Roots Music. Strictly premium grade reggae and dub steppers from the early 70's to present day. |
Posted By: LondonTowers
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 5:38pm
its basic computer maths.. basically on a binary system, which is what PC's operate on, the total addressable memory is linked to the operating system on a 32bit Operating system, the operating system can address (read: address, basically means 'use') 2 ^ 32 bytes of ram, which equates to 4GB. The reason 3.xx GB of ram is quoted as useable on a 32-bit operating system, is because there are various deductions, the various cache's on motherboard, cpu, gfx card, gfx memory, etc etc. so in reality on a modern day PC is somewhere between 3.4gb anfd 3.6gb with a 256mb gfxcard installed. The program you speak of would effectivly do nothing, yes it may make the operating system 'read' the memory, however the nature of a 32-bit operating system means it cant write to the extra memory, this program was useful say, on older machines to break windows 3.1 and 95 locks on memory capacities and utilise the full 32-bit nature of the machine. so even if you could make your 32-bit os read 16gb of memory, it would only every use the 3.xx gb anyway because it wouldnt even know the rest of it existed, infact this program can break things further, because programmes running on a 32-bit os only know the 2^32 memory locations, when it starts writing and the memory is almost full, it may accidently write into a memory space that it can never access because it doesnt know how. this is why 64-bit operating systems were introduced, and also why most programmes you download will ask you if you have either or operating system platform, because programmes written for 64-bit operating systems, will have the knowledge of memory addresses upto 2^64 bytes, which is something like 16 trillion GB, in the PC wodl this is considered infinite, and if we ever get upto that memory capability, a 128bit platform would have to be developed. /end essay. |
audiomik wrote:Posted By: Spesh
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 5:53pm
Can you not get around this by enabling "memory hole remapping" in the BIOS? ------------- Symmetry Soundsystem |
Posted By: LondonTowers
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 6:23pm
| nope. the most reliable way to do it , is just install a 64bit os and be done with it :) |
Posted By: Spesh
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 6:28pm
Yes, 64 bit is definitely the way forward. Particularly for a gaming or music machine, where additional RAM would be required. Got 12 gigs @ 1600mhz in mine. Probably a bit excessive, but it's future proofing I guess. ------------- Symmetry Soundsystem |
Posted By: subbass
Date Posted: 07 September 2010 at 7:50pm
do you ever use more than 4gb of that? i find even with autocad + photoshop + rendering software i only ever get upto about 3gb...
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Posted By: Spesh
Date Posted: 08 September 2010 at 2:14am
Rarely, to be honest.
Some modern games that I have will use a little bit more than normal, but 12 is pretty unecessary. It's Crucial Ballistix RAM and they were doing some sort of deal when I built my PC, so I went a bit "all out" on it. The speed of the RAM tends to be much more important than the actual quantity of data it can store. ------------- Symmetry Soundsystem |
Posted By: LondonTowers
Date Posted: 08 September 2010 at 12:44pm
Pretty much any of that lot when used in a production enviroment will chew more than 4gb of ram easily.. for instance, i run a forum from my PC, which involves an SQL server and a webserver. the webserver when under heavy load will chew about 3gb of ram alone, the SQL server, well that depends on how many people are accessing it, but that can be masive too.
I also run a teamspeak server from my PC which when about 30 people are all logged in and using it at the same time cripples reasources, then i sometimes run a media server to i can watch movies on my PC on the TV downstairs, another 500meg of ram at full usage, then when im writing computer code, when i compile that, that will chew a few gig of ram, 3d image rendering chews alot, then theres running Cubase + reason + plugins + melodyne + whatever else you want to use for music production/recording, i also play an online game called EVE-Online, which i run 7 instances of at once (7 different characters) each instance eats 500meg of ram, so thats 3.5gig.
Thank fook i have a leased line running into my house provided by BT infonet (Buisness class stuff) which can handle about 30gig of data running in and out easily.
It all mounts up you see, and if your wondering, i use a dual quad core i7 server mothboard with 24gig of memory. <-- i got it cheap :D
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