Topic: Help with upgrade

[shellyo1o]

Hi
I have been reading your forums for a few days, and they are very interesting and friendly, so I thought maybe someone could give me some advice.

I have a pc running xp home, xp2700+, 120gb hd, G force 4, with 2 x 256mb DDR ram.

I want to add more memory, and another hard drive, but i am confused as to the make of memory i can use.  my current sticks are 256mb ddr 333 cl2.5, I have three slots on my motherboard, but i'm unsure if i can use all three, (two are in use  at the moment).
I don't mind totally replacing the sticks I have, but again, i'm not sure what to replace it with.
I use my pc for games, internet and watching movies.
I usually have 2 or 3 things going on at once, which is causing a slow down, so I think more memory is the way to go, but if anyone has any other ideas please throw them at me. I have upped my virtual memory, which has helped slightly, but as this is taken from my hd, i'm not keen on that either.
Also, if i add another hard drive and more memory will i need to change anything else, like power supply or fan.  I'm not at home right now so i can't tell you what i have in that respect.
Sorry for the long post, hope it makes sense.
Thanks
Michele
BTW i'm not very tech minded, so any answers in plain english if poss! ty

[Clive]

Hi Michele and     One of our techies will help you with your problem very shortly.  Thanks for your nice comments.  

[Simon]

Hi Shelly, and  

For the memory, you could do a lot worse than pay a visit to www.crucial.com.  As long as you know the make and model of your motherboard, they will tell you what memory you can use.  If you don't know the details of your motherboard, you could download Belarc Advisor, which is a free utility.  This scans your PC and tells you what it's made of.

One of the techies should be able to help you with the rest of your query.  

[Sandra]

Hi Michele,
The best thing as far as getting the correct RAM is to find the make and model number of your motherboard and check which ram is suitable from :

www.crucial.com

Theyre not the cheapest but arent much dearer than buying generic ram on line.
As far as having 3 slots goes, unless the spare slot is a different length,(for SDRAM, which is unlikely), it should take at least 512mbs in each slot so you could add another 256 or 512 in addition to youre 2 x 256 or relace them with 2 x 512 or even have 3 x 512 in it, possibly 1 gig in each too but I think that woud be a bit OTT  
Before you decide to go ahead please let us know which motherboard you are using, just incase it has some strange limitations on the amount and type of ram it can use.

You should be able to add another 120 gig hard drive as a slave easily enough to your existing one or possibly a bigger one depending on the BIOS of your motherboard.

Hope that this helps you a little  

[ketamininja]

Check the memory sticks for any manufacturer names.

Some types of memory will not work with others, which is a pain, but if you have no markings, then its more likely to be "generic" memory, so any "generic" 333Mhz 2.5CL sticks would be fine (2.5CL is standard for this type of memory, and is nothing special - your 333Mhz is the important bit here).

Your mainboard may only be able to accept a max amount of memory, but I would suggest with the speed of the CPU, the mainboard should accept at least 3 x 512 sticks.... another 256 stick to bring you to 3 x 256 should be fine.

Hard drive is no problem, providing that you only have 3 "drives" (or less) already (DVD/CD/CDRW/HDD - the floppy, if standard, doesn't count). If you already have 4 drives, then you would have to configure a special port, called RAID, to accept the newer drive...


all in all, I would say its probably going to be fine! Depending where you are in the world, goods usually come with a "testing" period - basically you have to see if the product is suitable for your needs. Some stores say this doesn't apply to memory, but it does. If you buy from a small local store, get them to write the return policy on the invoice. Usually you have 7 - 14 days in the UK.

[shellyo1o]

Thank you Sandra & Simon & Ket.
The memory i have must be generic.
I have d/l and run the advisor - very useful, but i don't understand all the info, maybe you can help.

Processor (is this the chip?)
2.15 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board (is this the mobo?)
board: nVidia-nForce
Bus Clock: 166 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 09/24/2003
Drives

Memory modules
384 Megabytes Installed Memory (why is this only 384, not 512?)

Slot 'A0' has 256 MB
Slot 'A1' has 256 MB
Slot 'A2' is Empty

Also, has anyone got any thoughts on ddr2?
Thanks again.

[shellyo1o]

I have tried crucial.com, but i can't find anywhere to put the motherboard model, only the pc make and model, which i don't know.
What i'd like to know is if i could use faster ddr, and replace the 333 with maybe 400, or ddr2?
Thanks again.
Michele
 

[Simon]

Select the manufacturer of your motherboard from the drop down menu, then it will ask you which product line, so select 'Motherboard', and go from there.  

[shellyo1o]

Thanks Simon,  but I don't know the make of the mother board.  :-[

I have put the information I got from the advisor in a previous post, but i'm still hanging out for someone to explain most of it to me :-[ :-[.
Sorry for being a pain, and thank you again.

[Simon]

OK, in the absence of a techie, perhaps you'd like to try something else?  If you download AIDA32 from here, it should definitely give you the name and model of your motherboard.  It does the same sort of thing as Belarc, but in much more detail.  

Sorry you haven't had a reply sooner, but we've had some server problems which prevented many of us getting access to the forum.  This was entirely out of our control, but hopefully it's now fixed.

[Sandra]

Memory modules
384 Megabytes Installed Memory (why is this only 384, not 512?)

It is probably becuse you have an onboard graphics card which must be 128mbs and that is using the extra 128mbs out of the 512 mbs total leaving you with 384 mbs available the rest of your PC to use  

The only thing that I can find so far about the board that Belarc says you have is that it appears to be an MSI one.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=msinforce&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

This article was over 2 years ago so there may be some more now as well as that one.
If you try the program that Simon has suggested, hopefully it will narrow the choices down a little.
The other way would be to actually open the case and see if you can see a name and model number and possibly a revision number printed on the motherboard itself  


Edited to add :

Apparently that chipset is also used in some ASUS mobos too so we definately need you to run the other program or to see if you can identify it by opening the case  

[shellyo1o]

Thanks for the replies, I ran the other program and got this:
Motherboard Properties   
Motherboard ID   09/24/2003-nVidia-nForce-6A61BBK9C-00
Motherboard Name   Unknown
   
Front Side Bus Properties   
Bus Type   DEC Alpha EV6
Bus Width   64-bit
Real Clock   166 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock   333 MHz
Bandwidth   2664 MB/s
I have checked on the motherboard itself, but there are no names or codes on it anywhere.
 

[Simon]

Not having much luck here are we?    Perhaps one of our techies can ID the motherboard from that info?

Have you had the machine from new, Shelly?  Where did you buy it?  Is it by any chance a Time or a Tiny?

[shellyo1o]

I bought the machine new last year, and yes, its a time computer.

[Simon]

OK, well I think Time / Tiny often use MSI boards, but it might be worth contacting them with the serial number of the PC (on the back), to see if they can tell you which motherboard you have.  Just a warning,  they will probably try to get you to let them do the upgrade, but once you have the right information, installing new memory is easy enough, unless you really want to pay them about £30 per hour to do it.