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Upgrade Your Desktop PC Computer Ram
A Picture Illustrated Guide To Upgrading The RAM Memory In Your Desktop Personal Computer

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The first step in upgrading the memory in your desktop personal computer is to buy the ram itself. My Micro ATX Asus P4B533 VM motherboard requires either PC1600 or PC2100 DDR 266mhz RAM.

I ordered two sticks of 512mb PC2100 DDR 266 RAM to replace the measly 128mb PC1600 memory that I currently had in my desktop computer.

Search your motherboard manufacturer's site or your manual to determine which type of RAM you'll need for the upgrade process.




Click To Enlarge Picture

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FedEx Box


 

After your RAM shows up in the mail, remove it from the FedEx box and put on your anti-static wristband or just touch something large and metal first before you touch the ram. If you shock the ram with static electricity you might damage the memory. I live in Florida where the humidity prevents the majority of static electricity.
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New 1GB DDR Ram

Place your full tower, mid tower, or mini tower desktop computer case flat on the ground. Remove the screws that hold the entire case on, or just the left side cover if they are separate. Usually removing the left side cover will give you access to the drives, motherboard, RAM, AGP video card, and PCI cards.
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For my Micro ATX form factor case, I had to remove the vertically mounted DVD-RW / CD-RW Lite On disk drive. This micro-atx case is only about 5 1/2 inches in width so it has a very small footprint under my desk. The only drawback to this is that it runs very hot since there is less room for heat to dissipate. I usually leave the left side case completely off to let the computer "breathe".
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Once I had removed the Lite-On Dual Layer DVD burner, I still didn't have a clear shot at the RAM due to the IDE from the Seagate hard drives, and the power cables from the 400W power supply. After I unplugged the cables, I had to unseat my NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 DDR 128mb memory video card. I then popped out the 128 mb sticks of PC1600 RAM and inserted the new RAM.
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Finally in the picture to the right, you can see my two sticks of 512MB PQi ram for a whopping total of 1024 megabytes of quick double data rate 266 megahertz RAM. My processor is only a Pentium 4 1.5Ghz, but I expect that upgrading from 256mb RAM to 1GB would let me multitask more without the computer hard drive spinning so much due to the virtual memory swap file.
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Then I put everything back together, made sure all the PCI and AGP cards were seated tightly, and double checked the IDE cables. Finally I plugged the power supply back in and turned the case upright.

Once I turned on my computer, the system BIOS showed the new 1 gigabyte of RAM. If your computer beeps, doesn't boot up, or shows the wrong amount or ram in your Windows system profile - then you have defective or incorrect RAM.

With a relatively inexpensive $65.00 upgrade of more RAM, my P4 1.5ghz desktop personal computer now seems faster, and I can multi task with more programs open at the same time.

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