A Beginners Guide: Upgrading Your PC's RAM

for all you people that are here for nothing more than learning the physical process of removing and installing ram modules this first bit is for you for those of you that are looking for additional information about upgrading your ram like how much ram should you get and what speed and those kinds of things stick around because that's coming up in just a few minutes before you go and do any swapping out of hardware in your pc you of course want to turn it off and unplug it from its power source and then open up the side panel of your computer before touching anything in your computer or touching your new components i recommend that you equalize the static charge between you and this computer stuff you're working on to do this all you have to do is touch a metal part of your computer case and that'll do the trick there are those that feel you should always wear an anti-static wrist strap but not everyone has one of those and this achieves pretty much the same thing and every computer i've ever built i've used this technique and to date i've killed a grand total of zero pc components but don't take my word for it jay's two cents isn't shy about the fact he builds computers on carpet which those same people tell you you should never do i've placed links to several of his videos where he talks about esd or electrostatic discharge in the video description if you'd like to check them out if you're looking to replace the ram modules you currently have in your system with new ones you can remove your existing modules by unlocking the latches on either side of your ram stick by depressing them like so some other boards have latches on both ends of each stick while others have a latch on only one side unlocking these will begin popping your ram stick out of the slot and from there you simply grab the module and pull it straight on out if you're just looking to add more ram to your system as opposed to replacing the ram you currently have you can leave your current memory modules in place and simply drop some new sticks into any open slots you have available first you will need to open the retention latches by pressing them down and out of the way ram modules can only be installed in a single direction so you need to align the notch in your new ram module with the little plastic divider here in the ram slot and then slide the module into the socket uh pressing down firmly until the module is fully seated and the latch or latches lock into place okay that's the physical installation process uh so if that's all you're here for uh go ahead and move on about your day for those of you looking to learn a little more let's dive on in shall we depending on your motherboard you may have two four or even eight dimm slots on your board boards with eight slots are most often found in workstations or super high-end enthusiast pcs and i'm going to take a wild guess that 99.999 of people watching this video probably don't fall into either one of those categories so i'm just going to cover the scenario the vast majority of you i'm sure are in which is a motherboard with four dimm slots now you can populate a single slot two slots three slots or all four when populating a single slot or three slots however that puts your ram into single channel mode which will result in half the memory bandwidth of dual channel so to run your ram in dual channel mode you're going to need two or four sticks of ram because dual channel effectively doubles your memory bandwidth and offers greater performance over single channel it is very common for pcs nowadays to utilize at least two sticks of ram so that's what i'm going to talk about here to run your ram in dual channel mode there are certain slots that must be used to find out which slots your motherboard manufacturer recommends you use you can consult your motherboard manual but if you don't have a motherboard manual typically you want to place one stick in the furthest right slot skip a slot and then place your second stick in the third slot from the right like this if you're only using a single stick some motherboards allow you to use any slot uh while others have specific slots to use to get the best performance and the best way to find out which slot your board prefers is to look in your motherboard manual when shopping for new ram to pair with memory you already have in your system i recommend buying the exact same brand speed and capacity of sticks that you currently have memory is one of those things that can be a bit finicky if things aren't just right and mixing and matching speeds and capacities can sometimes cause system freezes crashes and a lot of other problems and just general weirdness so to minimize the possibility of these issues as much as possible sticking with the same brand speed and capacity of ram modules is always a good idea in my opinion now i have seen people mix and match different ram modules and have no issues at all but i've also seen people have a lot of issues when trying to mix ram so i always avoid it just to save myself those potential headaches if you're unable to get ram that is the same brand at least try to get ram that is the same speed and capacity as what you currently have as that will help minimize your chances of incompatibility issues one thing to be aware of too is if you install ram that's rated at a different speed than the ram you currently have your new ram will only run at the rated speed of the slowest module in your computer for example if you currently have ram that's rated at 2400 megahertz and then you buy a kit of 4 000 megahertz the fastest you'll be able to run your new ram is 2400 megahertz because that is the maximum speed of your old ram 4 000 megahertz ram is quite a bit more expensive than 2 400 megahertz ram too so it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a bunch of money on new ram and then kneecap the crap out of it by pairing it with older slower ram in my opinion it makes more sense in this situation to just fully remove your old ram and just use the new ram okay so that's my recommendation if you're adding ram to your existing configuration now if you're completely swapping out your existing ram kit for a new one then that makes things a bit easier as you don't have to worry as much about which brand speed or capacity you buy i say you don't have to worry as much because you don't have to worry about trying to find the exact same modules you already have but you do need to be aware that not all memory modules will be compatible with your motherboard the current memory standard as of the making of this video is ddr4 if you have a computer that was built prior to 2016 you will most likely have ddr3 you can actually still buy ddr3 on sites like newegg amazon and others right now in 2020 but i have to believe that it won't be much longer before ddr3 will only be available secondhand on sites like ebay as it's getting very old now and ddr5 is on the horizon so when choosing new ram for your computer you first need to know what type of ram your motherboard supports if you're upgrading your current pc you can just look at your existing ram modules and there should be a label of some kind telling you what they are the computer i'm using for this video uses ddr4 so that is what we're going to be looking at here you'll then want to decide what capacity and speed of memory you want for a gaming pc in 2020 i recommend installing 16 gigabytes of ram as that is the current sweet spot you can still get by with 8 gigabytes right now but many games are beginning to utilize more than 8 gigabytes of ram so moving up to 16 gigabytes is just a smart thing to do at this point as for memory speed the base speed of ddr4 is 2133 megahertz so anything you buy that is rated at a higher speed is considered to be an overclock and you'll have to enable that in your motherboard bios in order to run your ram at that rated speed finding out what speeds your motherboard supports uh will require you to do a little homework uh but it can be found pretty easily on your motherboard manufacturer's product page what speed you ultimately choose is entirely up to you currently the generally accepted sweet spot when it comes to price to performance is between 3 000 megahertz and 3 600 megahertz but my philosophy has always been to just buy the fastest memory that my motherboard supports that fits into my budget consequently more often than not that usually seems to fall into that sweet spot range once i've decided the capacity and speed of ram that i want i then go to my motherboard manufacturer's support page for my motherboard and find their qvl or qualified vendor list and i look to see which of the kits if any that fit into my budget will work with my motherboard now you may or may not be aware that motherboard manufacturers test their motherboards with many different kits of ram and put together lists of kits that have been tested and verified to work with their different motherboard models obviously they are not able to test every kit in existence so just because a particular kit you're looking at buying isn't on their list doesn't mean that it's not compatible it may just mean that they didn't test it personally i like to buy kits that have been tested and verified because the very first pc i ever built i didn't know that some ram modules will not work with some motherboards and i bought a kit that ended up being incompatible with my motherboard and was getting a ram read write error that kept me from even being able to install windows onto my computer i then had to rma that ram and then buy a new kit that was compatible since that time i try to only buy ram that is on the motherboard qvl to avoid repeating this same mistake that being said i have built a couple pcs using ram kits that weren't on the motherboard qvl in more recent years and haven't had a problem but now i also typically stick to highly reputable brands like g-skill and corsair uh whereas on my very first pc i went cheap and bought some ram from a manufacturer i'd never heard of before and actually have never heard of since well there you go if you follow all these tips your ram upgrading adventure should be an enjoyable and successful one i hope that you enjoyed this video and the tips shared helped you feel more comfortable and confident when it comes to upgrading your ram yourself please let me know what you thought about this video in the comments uh and there's all that other youtube stuff that really helps out the channel too you know like share and subscribe for more videos like this one i also have an amazon store where you can buy products that i feature in my videos and you can find the link to it in the video description thanks for watching i really appreciate it and i hope that you have a fantastic day and we'll catch you later bye bye later bye [Music] you

Channel: Maraksot78

Views: 1,657,460

Keywords: RAM, memory, random access memory, upgrade, install, remove, uninstall, download RAM, increase RAM, how to, tutorial, how to remove RAM modules, how to install RAM modules, how to remove RAM sticks, how to install RAM sticks, dual channel, single channel, how much RAM do I need, what speed RAM should I buy, memory support list, QVL, qualified vendor list, ddr3, ddr4, ddr5, how to upgrade RAM on PC, upgrade ram

Id: RdukEtSlia0

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020