Looking for a ram upgrade

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Ahriman

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Jul 17, 2013
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I have a desktop ( Acer Aspire M3970g ), and am looking to upgrade the ram available. I have already upgraded the gpu and psu to acceptable levels for the moment, and am unsure of how to determine what ram is compatible for said upgrade. I am familiar with the crucial tool, and have pulled that information, but would like to have the opportunity to learn what actually determines ram comparability and be able to buy outside of the crucial retail environment.

Thanks in advance for any assistance!
 
Solution
IntelTurtleFan
Generally speaking the motherboard determines how much you can put on it.
New PCs over the last 6ish years have used the DDR3 RAM socket.
DDR3 speed generally ranges from 1066 to 2133. Not all motherboards can take the 2133 speed.
To find out what a motherboard takes you must look up the motherboard or in a prebuilt build you lookup the make and see if it can take more. Generally speaking any computer built over the last 1-2 years has at least 1333 speed ram. New chipsets such as H97 and Z97 are very similar however H97 can use up to 1600 speed RAM in most cases. As Z97 can use 2133+ anything above 1866 or 2133 is normally considered overclocked RAM and it can vary if your motherboard can take it. Another thing that determines how...
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IntelTurtleFan

IntelTurtleFan

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Apr 10, 2015
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Generally speaking the motherboard determines how much you can put on it.
New PCs over the last 6ish years have used the DDR3 RAM socket.
DDR3 speed generally ranges from 1066 to 2133. Not all motherboards can take the 2133 speed.
To find out what a motherboard takes you must look up the motherboard or in a prebuilt build you lookup the make and see if it can take more. Generally speaking any computer built over the last 1-2 years has at least 1333 speed ram. New chipsets such as H97 and Z97 are very similar however H97 can use up to 1600 speed RAM in most cases. As Z97 can use 2133+ anything above 1866 or 2133 is normally considered overclocked RAM and it can vary if your motherboard can take it. Another thing that determines how much RAM your computer can take is if your Operating system is 64 or 32 bit. Generally 8GB nowadays is considered standard. There is other things that you take into consideration when selecting RAM but these are the most common. There are other ways of measuring the speed such as the Cas Latency and Timings. But for this basic or not so basic writ I will not go into any more detail. If you want to PM me I can give you some articles about this.

Your Motherboard can support 4x4GB sticks running at 1600 like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231429
 
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Solution
Shaun o

Shaun o

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Oct 7, 2007
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Ram compatibility comes down to what model of board the system has in it.
The bios firmware version the board currently has.
The amount of slots provided on the board for memory modules.
And the type of memory controller used with the chip set version of the motherboard.

You will find that if the system you have was pre built by a company such as dell for example, or acer as a ready to run out of the box system with a pre installed os.

That the motherboard used is custom made for the model version of the system.
Often they have a very basic bios and firmware.
meaning that when you enter the bios you have very limited options and features that in a retail motherboard you will have.
Options such as the speed ratings of the memory and settings for it are limited.
Leaving you with a very small amount of choice when it comes to the speed and capacity of memory you can buy and will work with the system.

Your board will support a maximum of 16Gb of memory.
That means each of the four memory slots of the M3970g will support a maximum density size of memory of 4Gb per memory stick or module.
Please click on the link bellow to see what memory kits will work with your M3970g system.
Based on the brand name you can buy the memory stated as working, or known to work with the system from any place you choose that sells memory for upgrading the system.
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Acer/aspire-m3970g-uw10p
 
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