Blue Screen Of Death

[plod]

When I say maximum of 4gb, I mean with 32bit OS
Apparently if I install a 64bit OS the laptop can handle 8gb

If that's not an easy option, and there wouldn't be much difference between 3 and 4gb, then I may as well save my pennies and just get a 1gb

[plod]

Just checked my system and it says 64bit capable

[plod]

mmm, maybe i'm getting carried away here

i'm trying to spend money i ain;t really got, so think i'll just go for the 1gb

[OdinEidolon]

plod, I do not know which OS you run, but 2gb or RAM will suffice for most configurations, 4 is good and 8 is a utter waste.
However, you may be wanting to run the memory in dual channel to give it a slight performance increase. To do so it is best to purchase another 2gb, so that it matches the 2gb you have already. However, the 32 bit OS wll recognize only 3.5gb. That said, the price of a 2gb module isn't much more than the price of a 1gb module.
But in the end I do not see the point. If you do not do heavy photo or video editing, manage big databases, things like that, 2gb will suffice, period. Do not go through the hassle, stick with one stick! (pun intended)

EDIT after last post. Then get 2gb or nothing, imho. Check it is the same kind of memory which is in your laptop: ddr2, ddr3 etc. Also check the speed is the same or higher than the one you already have.

[plod]

So I believe I have 667mhz, but I was bidding on a 800mhz 2gb earlier on the bay, so guess that would be beneficial then, especially if it goes for not to much?

[OdinEidolon]

So I believe I have 667mhz, but I was bidding on a 800mhz 2gb earlier on the bay, so guess that would be beneficial then, especially if it goes for not to much?

It will still run at 667MHz 'cause that's your (FSB speed*mem multipler) at the moment. The 800MHz modules will do, however, since they are capable of running at 667 with no problem. Again, you may not need to spend anything on it. If you see the performance does not need more memory (monitor it with some program or with Window's own resource monitor), you do not need any more memory.

EDIT bear in mind that even if you ran your memoty all at 800MHz (which should be achivable even for a standard 667-rated memory) then the performance increase would probably be on the range of less than 1%. Not worth it.

[plod]

ok, many thanks

[plod]

So my dad says to me the other day, he had some spare memory and I could come up and have it if I wanted

I asked if it was DDR2 PC2-5300 SODIMM and he says not a clue
I thought chances of compatibility were slim, and just ordered 1GB which i'm waiting to be delivered
So I was up there yesterday, and he goes here's that memory - and you know what it was exactly the sort I needed plus it was 2GB
I thought bloody typical
I put it in, and it as thought only recognised 1GB of it

I'll leave it in though, and sell the 1GB when it arrives as will still be sealed in its packaging - either that or stick in cupboard in case the other one goes tits up, mmm, though sound good, mmm tits, oops, sorry went off on one there

[highlander]

Keeping spare parts for computers does sound like a pain in the ass (taking up space, gathering dust, etc) but sometimes it can really save your bacon.

The server PC I mentioned (with the imminent hard drive failure) failed last night - but not in the way I expected. I thought the hard drive would fail. Nope. I pressed the power button and BANG! Circuit breaker tripped, all the power sockets around the flat went off. There was a really bright flash from the back of the machine, and a strong smell of burnt cookies.

Turns out a capacitor inside the power supply unit had exploded. Luckily, I had a spare one in my cupboard, and got it swapped out in 20 minutes flat. I no longer have a spare PSU, but I'm glad I did have one when that one died.

[OdinEidolon]

Keeping spare parts for computers does sound like a pain in the ass (taking up space, gathering dust, etc) but sometimes it can really save your bacon.

The server PC I mentioned (with the imminent hard drive failure) failed last night - but not in the way I expected. I thought the hard drive would fail. Nope. I pressed the power button and BANG! Circuit breaker tripped, all the power sockets around the flat went off. There was a really bright flash from the back of the machine, and a strong smell of burnt cookies.

Turns out a capacitor inside the power supply unit had exploded. Luckily, I had a spare one in my cupboard, and got it swapped out in 20 minutes flat. I no longer have a spare PSU, but I'm glad I did have one when that one died.

Keep in mind a good PSU is the most important component in a PC. I always use high quality PSUs, Corsair, Enermax, Bequiet and many more. In the past I've used www.johnnyguru.com for PSU reviews, very good site.

[highlander]

Duly noted. Actually, I bought a good quality power supply, a XFX Core Edition PRO650W, for my new PC back in January. It cost me £70 which is quite a lot more than I usually spend on PSUs. The sales guy at the local PC shop I bought it from told me that you're guaranteed to get the full 650W out of that supply because it's all loaded on to the 12v rail. No idea if that's actually true or not, but hell, I needed a power supply of at least 500W in a hell of a hurry and the biggest one I could get from PC World was 400W (less than the supply I had been trying to power it with previously). Needless to say I spent the £70 and the XFX power supply seems to work just fine in my gaming rig.

The supply I used to repair my far less powerful server PC last night was Zoostorm-branded 350W power supply. Zoostorm is a budget PC label - I only have it in my possession because my step-son needed a PC because his old one had crapped out completely, and I didn't have much money at the time, and so I bought a Zoostorm desktop PC for him. Take note - NEVER buy a budget pre-built PC. They're cheap for a reason, and that reason is because they are shite.

The Zoostorm system I bought promised a nice Intel Core2 Duo processor with 2 GB of RAM (not much but I could upgrade it, right?) and a decent 250 GB hard drive, a fully-licensed copy of WinXP Home Premium, and a built-in nVidia graphics card. The system arrived and didn't work at all, so I sent it back. They said "no fault found" and "returned" it - what actually arrived was another system of the same spec (the serial number was different on both the motherboard and the case). This time it booted. But I wanted to put his 500 GB hard drive in there. When I opened the case I found I couldn't remove the hard drive because the processor was in the way I couldn't install his graphics card because the front panel USB headers were conveniently-located between the PCI-Express slot and the first of only two PCI slots on the board - the front panel USB headers were right where the graphics card fan should be. There were only two slots for RAM and they had to be matched, so I had to buy two new 2 GB RAM modules. I upgraded the system to Vista (Win7 wasn't announced at the time) and whenever I installed any Windows updates (yes, any of them), the system would stop booting. No PC I ever used before or since had any problems with Vista. When I built my new gaming rig this year, my stepson got my old system that I built myself, and it's perfectly fine.

I still have the ECS micro-ATX motherboard from the Zoostorm system as a spare. Even though it's higher spec than the AMD Sempron 2800 I have in my server system, I won't upgrade my server with it because I don't believe it's reliable - but if the server motherboard dies, at least I'll have something to resurrect it with. Spare parts are good, if you've got some room for them.

[OdinEidolon]

That's why I never bought a PC, but always built it. It's hell cheaper too.
By the way 500W for a non extreme gaming rig should be sufficient, I had an e8500 and a 4850 in my rig back in the days and the Corsair 500W PSU was well ok with it. The problem is most low quality PSU rated for 500W will burn at 400W, and most only have part of it (say 300W) on the main 12V line, which is what you need most of the time (CPU and graphics are fed through that line)

By the way a very good components seller in the UK is scan.co.uk.

[highlander]

The Zoostorm system was only £250 as it was on a clearance sale, which is a lot less than I could source the components for separately. I would have built him a good system but I was broke and really busy with work at the time.

My current PC is an Intel Core i5, Gigabyte Z68 motherboard, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1.5 GB graphics card, a 1 TB SATA2 hard drive, and a SATA2 BluRay BD-ROM drive. It runs Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (64-bit), which I bought several years ago (again, way before Win7 was announced) - but I find Vista64 runs everything perfectly well. I can't really afford an upgrade to Win7 at the moment anyway - if it ain't broke, I ain't fixin' it.