Ram

[steelcaress]

I have a sticky issue:

Awhile ago I went up and down the highway in Washington State trying to find the best deal I could on computer parts. I found a barebones that fit my needs well, along with video card, sound card, cdrws, etc from another store, and finally ended up with 2 decent computers that have served me well. My wife has the exact same machine as me.

Here's my issue: the RAM came with the barebones system. It's not onboard, but there was one site where I tried to buy memory, and when I selected my motherboard it told me I had proprietary RAM:

"Your ASRock K7VM2 only supports modules made with a specific type of chip. Should you find what seems to be the exact same memory elsewhere for a lower price, it is very possible that the cheaper memory will not work in your computer."
http://www.4allmemory.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.memorySearch&model_id=43479&model=K7VM2]Found here[/URL]

ASRock
Motherboard model K7VM2, 2.00
BIOS vendor American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS revision P1.10
BIOS release date 11/13/2002
Chipset VIA P4M266/KM266 (VT8375) rev. 00
Southbridge VIA VT8235 rev. 00
Sensor chip Winbond W83697HF

The stats on this RAM are:
DRAM Type SDRAM
DRAM Size 256 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 145.4 MHz
FSBRAM FSB - 33 MHz
DRAM Interleave none
CAS# Latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge 3 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 6 clocks
# of memory modules 1
Module 0 Smart Modular DDR-SDRAM PC2100 - 256 MBytes

Now, we're in desperate need of an upgrade, as you can tell. I know that if you mix DDRAM and SDRAM, you could melt the RAM and ruin your board.

I dunno what happens in this case.

And the "autodetect" functions of RAM vendors don't seem to work. Going back to the original location we bought it at isn't really feasible, as it was a discount outlet -- "Computer Surplus" -- and they don't really deal with things like this, not to mention they're about 2800 miles away.

So I'm wondering if anyone knows what might happen if I buy off-the-shelf RAM?

 

[WorldIndustries]

I read up on the specs... And from what I can tell, it'll support any major brand RAM of SDRAM or DDR RAM, as long as you don't put both types in at the same time. I would reccomend a major brand name such as Kingston or Corsiar. They are pretty much guarunteed to work in any normal motherboard.

However, for the DDR RAM. It'll only support DDR 266, the slowest type of DDR RAM out there. However, luckily, you can still put any type of DDR RAM in that slot, because DDR RAM is backwards compatable (ie: You can buy DDR 400 RAM. It will downclock automatically to DDR 266)