Ram and motherboards

[altwight]

okay so this whole SDDR 27309 184pin stuff i dont really know what the DDR infront of the 184pin is but i recently found this hot motherboard that would work very very well with my plans. Buying a new processor that it supports and it has a pci-e slot it has 2 types of ram slots. 2x 240 slots and 2x 184 slots. This is very convinent for me since i could never find a board that had pci-e and my processor worked with that used my ram. My ram is currentl 184pin and im upgrading. My questions is: If a motherboard says it uses 184pin ram chips and i have 184 ram chips, will it run ANY AND ALL 184 ram chips? Ill be using the 240pins once i order them but this just makes it easier if the board can use my current chips

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157107 <--- board

Plan is ill buy the processor vid card and board and use my current ram in the mobo until i have enough to buy my new ram. wondering if my 184 pins will work, cause all i know is my current ram is 184pin.

-btw sorry for all the questions and topics im really new to all this and you guys help a lot

edit: question too.

Motherboard: Memory standard: DDR2 667
Ram: Speed DDR2 675 (PC2 5400)

does this mean that the ram is too fast for the motherboard therefor incompatible?

[Snowknight26]

DDR: Double-data-rate; SDRAM was its predecessor. Newer technology, more bandwidth, etc.
Generally, motherboards with 184-pin DIMMs will accept any 184-pin RAM. Some exceptions are for RDRAM/NON-ECC/Registered/Unbuffered/etc RAM, but you shouldn't have that problem.

If you buy RAM thats faster than the mobo is compatable with, it'll just underclock the RAM and set it to whatever the mobo can handle. Say your mobo supports up to DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) RAM, but what you have is DDR2 1250 (PC2 10000) RAM, your mobo will recognize it as DDR2 1000 RAM. Unfortunately it wont perform like its intended. Instead of running at DDR2 1250, it'll run at DDR2 1000.

So yes, it will be compatible, but it'll just run a tad slower.

[altwight]

ic ic. well it's a huge upgrade from my current ram i guess. DDR pc2700 and pc3100. I'm guessing it'll be a huge upgrade. The ram im gitting is pc 5500 i believe. thanks again

[Osede]

the best thing you can do is go to motherboard manufacture website, and then go to the particular motherboard page. And check which brand and which kind of ram is compatible with the motherboard. Usually one brand and one kind of ram they got different kind of serials numbers(or something like that) which have different compatibility with different kind of motherboard, even thought those rams all have same bus speed, same size and etc.

[altwight]

did what you said and went to the mobo site

- Dual Channel DDR/DDRII memory technology*
- 2 x DDRII DIMM slots
- Supports DDRII667/533
- Max. capacity: 2GB
- 2 x DDR DIMM slots
- Supports DDR400/333/266
- Max. capacity: 2GB

so with that. I can put my 2 current DDR 200/166 512/512mb sticks of ram + my 2x 1gb DDR2 675 sticks of ram and it would be better than just my 2x 1gb DDR2 675. Or would the non identical ram sticks throw some stuff off and make it slower?

[Snowknight26]

I'm not sure how that mobo handles two different types of RAM. It might slow down the DDR2 RAM to the DDR RAM's speed or it might use both at their individual speeds with some memory management stuff thats beyond me. Hopefully the latter.

Then again, maybe you can only have one type of RAM in at any given time or else it wont boot. No idea really.

[altwight]

If the case is that only one type of ram DDR/DDR2 can be in at a time, do you think both at the same time might EXPLODE the board? Friend told me ram is the main issue in motherboard exploding

[altwight]

hay snow, question about overclocking CPU. Read 2.4c Pentium 4s are good to overclock to around 3.1. My bios doens't have a overclock option so where might i go to git one?

[Skyylya]

You have to do it manually in your bios through the advanced functions. I can't remember off the top of my head which one it is. But you gottat set one of the FSB speed things to manual, then it'll open up the new options where you can set the different speeds from like 5-5-5-12 to 4-4-4-12 or something like that, you should see the numbers and their corresponding part. Just make sure you go slowly, and don't touch the voltages unless you read up on it alot and know what you're doing.

You don't wanna make a huge change to the FSB speed then jump into windows and pump up a game. Get at least 2 thermal detecting programs, cause you wanna be sure you're not frying anything, and 2 is better than one. Also get a program like orthos to run a stress test for about 12 hours to be safe after you make a change, so you know your PC will be stable after the change. If after one change, and one test your PC is stable, try to increase the FSB again then do the same thing, make sure it's stable. If you get to a point where your PC doesn't boot or shuts down cause of to much heat or something, just take it back a notch to where it stay's stable under the stress test.

overclocking is fun, but read up on your MOBO to see how good it works to overclock, if your chipset can't really handle an overclock but your CPU can, you might screw up your MOBO or your ram or something.