Sons gaming computer and RAM

[Nic-nfr74]

We got my son a gaming computer a couple of years ago and he now tells me he needs more RAM

with a little investigation he has 2 slots available and the computer has 1 slot being used with a 8 GB RAM. I guess I can just buy him another 8GB and slot it directly into the 2nd free slot of off he goes with 16GB - is it that simple? Anything else I would need to do? (no idea on any of this)

OR do we try to get ahead and by 2 16GB and replace the one 8GB so he has 32GB and he will have to spend something like £250

He has also shown me he can buy RAM at CEX which I guess is 2nd hand - is this okay to do?

He told me he needs DDR4 3200mhz RAM if that makes a difference

thanks and be gentle as this is all another language and all means nothing to me

[grumbas]

Ram has got horrendously expensive with the AI boom.

Amazon can be cheap for RAM, just stick to brands like Crucial sold/delivered by Amazon. If you're going the used route there are normally a few sellers on ebay who specialise in stripping ex corporate pcs for parts. Buyer protection on both is generally good.

If he's been getting by with 8Gb then an extra 8Gb to get 16Gb should be fine. Check the prices on 2x 16Gb though.

[Greedydog]

You need to be very careful mixing ram sticks, even if they look to be the same type and speed. It can be done but you might need to loosen timings etc. and some motherboards are fussier than others.

I would be inclined to buy a used pair of 16gb sticks from eBay to save some money. I’ve done just that and they work perfectly, but used equipment from an unknown source is always much higher risk.

[Nic-nfr74]

Thanks for the reply - so it's not just a straight plug and play. This was my fear and I guess it is simpler to get two new ones to be safe

So he will have to save up a bit more then

Amazon would be the easiest to get them from - any other place to consider? suppliers for 2 16gb?

[Greedydog]

Nic-nfr74 said:

Thanks for the reply - so it's not just a straight plug and play. This was my fear and I guess it is simpler to get two new ones to be safe

So he will have to save up a bit more then

Amazon would be the easiest to get them from - any other place to consider? suppliers for 2 16gb?

My go to for new bits are Scan and Overclockers or of course, Amazon, picking the cheapest and used I’d go with eBay sellers, not CeX.

[Dave Hedgehog]

Nic-nfr74 said:

Thanks for the reply - so it's not just a straight plug and play. This was my fear and I guess it is simpler to get two new ones to be safe

So he will have to save up a bit more then

Amazon would be the easiest to get them from - any other place to consider? suppliers for 2 16gb?

generally you want 2 matched memory sticks for DDR type, size, speed, and timings, you will need to check what type motherboard supports and the speed your CPU supports

you then want to make sure they are in the correct slots on the mother board to enable dual channel mode which gives a big performance boost as it acts a single super bus, that is the first slot for bank a and the first slot for bank b

on older machines DDR4 3200 was common in which case it can still be picked up reasonably priced

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Integral-2933MHz-2666MHz-...

Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Monday 19th October 13:52

[AlexC1981]

16GB should be fine for most games, though 32GB would be ideal.

The easiest way would probably to take out the stick and try to find the same one second hand on ebay. Be careful with static electricity when handling RAM.

[Nic-nfr74]

Okay I think I am understanding most of this - except how to find out the speed the Motherboard and CPU will work with. But that's okay

I think we have decided on getting ahead and him saving for 2 new 16gb cards to give him 32gb. We would be buying a pair so that makes life hopefully easier and simpler

Thanks for the link - these look good value as were told to look at Corsair as a brand and these are much more expensive

Sorry for all this - as a luddite I know nothing!!!! Still making me nervous to actually open the case and find them and exchange them soon!!!

[grumbas]

Nic-nfr74 said:

Okay I think I am understanding most of this - except how to find out the speed the Motherboard and CPU will work with. But that's okay

I think we have decided on getting ahead and him saving for 2 new 16gb cards to give him 32gb. We would be buying a pair so that makes life hopefully easier and simpler

Thanks for the link - these look good value as were told to look at Corsair as a brand and these are much more expensive

Sorry for all this - as a luddite I know nothing!!!! Still making me nervous to actually open the case and find them and exchange them soon!!!

If you pop out one of the old sticks it will normally have the spec printed on it.

Your motherboard (if it's a custom build PC) will probably have a model number on it that you can find the manual to check specs. Or if it's a Dell or similar pre-built PC their manual should have the specs.

You can probably put the above into your AI of choice and have it recommend something from Amazon...

If you're not sure though drop the info here and I'm sure someone will sanity check it for you.

[Nic-nfr74]

Thanks for this

I will go exploring with him, but he has started to think saving for two new ones. But it’s good to learn this stuff as well.

[AlexC1981]

If you can tell us exactly what CPU and graphics card (and preferably motherboard) he has, I'm sure a few people would be happy to venture an opinion on how best to upgrade it for gaming on a budget. Upgrading from 8GB is definitely a good move.

A very useful tool is CPUID CPU-Z that you can download and it will tell you what you've got. If you have onboard graphics and a separate graphics card you have to change from one to the other on the drop down menu to see the graphics card spec.

[Griffith4ever]

Nothing wrong with Cex - and good on him for suggesting this.

I've bought two used phones off them that were exactly as described (like new) and best of all, everything gets a 5 year warranty. You won't get that off Ebay, or Amazon.

[captain_cynic]

grumbas said:

If you pop out one of the old sticks it will normally have the spec printed on it.

CPU-z will tell you the relevant details.

You really only need to match the type and speed (I.E. DDR4-3800) even then that's largely a recommendation rather than a strict requirement (performance won't be as good as matching sticks).

[Nic-nfr74]

This is all good - When he gets home from college I will get him to find and download CPUID CPU-Z (I guess its an app) and see what he has - I am sure I have the spec somewhere from the order - we bought it from Costco so I must have the details somewhere too ( I will go find that and he can download CPU Z )

Again thanks for another step forward

[wombleh]

I would look on ebay, DDR4 is a bit older so there's plenty available without paying the current inflated prices. Ordered a few recently, 16GB of matched DDR4 for the lads gaming machine was £45 and 16GB for new home server was about the same. Looks like that's about £170 new.

[grumbas]

captain_cynic said:

grumbas said:

If you pop out one of the old sticks it will normally have the spec printed on it.

CPU-z will tell you the relevant details.

You really only need to match the type and speed (I.E. DDR4-3800) even then that's largely a recommendation rather than a strict requirement (performance won't be as good as matching sticks).

Good point I'd forgotten about CPU-Z.

Be careful on just matching type and speed though. It was true on DDR4 I think, but DDR5 is more fussy. Dell Precision laptops in particular will refuse to boot even with memory that meets the headline spec because an obscure (unpublished) requirement hasn't been met.

[simon_harris]

and don't forget you can offload the single 8gb stick you have on ebay

[Dave Hedgehog]

Nic-nfr74 said:

I think we have decided on getting ahead and him saving for 2 new 16gb cards to give him 32gb. We would be buying a pair so that makes life hopefully easier and simpler

i would go with 16gb unless the PC is running mid tier or higher CPU and GPU

[Pixelpeep Electric]

As you don't wanna be doing this too often might be worth trying to stretch to 32gb (2x16gb matched) if the mother board supports it.

[Nic-nfr74]

So we have downloaded and used CPUID CPU-Z and I have the details

I do think ideally we want to aim (If Possible) for 2 x 16gb so we don't have to do it again

Taken from CPU-Z

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 4500 6 core Processor
Mainboard - ASRock A520M-HDV PCI-Express 3.0 (8.0 GT/s)
Memory - DDR4 8gb
SPD - DDR4 (UDIMM) DDR4-2666 (1333 MHz)
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050

I have screen shots of each of these specs if that helps - non of it makes any sense to me, but you guys know your stuff!!!! I can share the photos of that helps