RAM - CS1

RAM

Before touching the RAM please refer back to the health and safety at the top of this page.

RAM stands for Random Access Memory, this is volatile memory, its basically where things that you are doing on the computer system are stored, RAM is used to speed up the process of doing things, so instead of things saving directly to your hard drive they will be stored on the RAM until they are desired to go to the hard drive, the problem with RAM is its volatile so if you were to lose power to your computer system then all of the things stored on your RAM will be lost, but if they are saved to the hard drive then they won’t be lost. Without RAM running a computer system would be virtually impossible, RAM plugs directly into the motherboard, there are several different types of RAM and they all have their unique compatibilities and times and speed, so far there are two different types of RAM, SRAM (static RAM) and DRAM (Dynamic RAM).

SRAM is faster that DRAM because it uses static, it can go as fast as 10 nanoseconds, as where as DRAM can only go as fast as 60 Nanoseconds. But the RAM you have will probably be DRAM as it is a lot cheaper than SRAM, and it is a lot more popular. There are four main types of RAM for a computer system, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 and DDR3. SDRAM being the oldest and slowest, and DDR3 being the fastest and newest RAM, all of these bits of RAM have different connections into a motherboard, so you should check on the motherboard what type of RAM your motherboards will support, next I will explain how to remove and put in a piece of RAM.

First of all you should locate the RAM slots, these will normally be near the edges, they are sometimes colour coded, and they will have two ‘leavers’ either side of the slot, to put the RAM in you will need to line it up with the slot, make sure you have the RAM the right way in, as it will only fir one way, the RAM will have a little gap in it, the slow will also have a ‘ridge’ or ‘bump’ that will split it up into sections, all you have to do is make sure the ‘bump’ and the gap are lined up, and simply press on top of the RAM once it is lined up, it should slot in easily, to remove it just simply press the catches on each side and pull the RAM out.