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adding memory in compaq

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7 replies

by rg11

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I have a compaq presario 5151 which hold up to 384mb of ram. Currently it has a 64mb pc100 sdram and a 32 mb chip. I purchased kingston 128mb pc100 sdram chip. I installed it and didnt recognise the new chip, but it did boot up errorless. Well Itook out the chip and found out I have to install a soft pack which updates the rom to recognize 128mb chips. My question is does it matter which bank each chip plugs into. For instance do I have to put the largest chip in the first slot or anything like that...

7 replies

by hjs

As a rule I always put the largest in slot 1, then the next largest in 2 etc. By the way slot 1 is the one closest to the CPU.

by andyrew322

Compaq can have a few issues when installing memory. First of which is check with compaq to see if you need to install Compaq specific memory-Compaq machines tend to be Proprietary-meaning the ram slots might look like standard slots but in reality their voltage requirements are not standard. Second, your motherboard might not be able to accept pc100 - you might need to go with pc66 at at the very most, but I suspect it might only support EDO. Third issue adding more ram might actually slow down your system- check your chipset-if you had to update your rom chances are you have an older chipset-the chipset can only cache up to 64 meg after that it disables the L2 cache and if you are running windows the OS never will get cached with more than 64 meg-meaning all system requests will depend on you hard drive.

Sorry to be a downer-even if it can handle the 128meg it is entirely useless in terms of system performance.

by maxwell edison

Yes it matters which slot(s) you use, as explained in answer number 1.

And Compaq may require special RAM for their machines. For a Compaq, you may have to buy from them directly OR go to www.crucial.com and follow the instructions to specify what memory is required for your computer.

Maxwell

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