Upgrading my RAM

gnolan

Not sure if this is the proper place for this, as it is probably a fairly minor upgrade.

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Si 1848. It currently only has 1GB of RAM. I'm looking to upgrade to at least 2GB but i'm not sure if it is already at it's max. To be honest, i'm not too familiar with the process, having not done it before.

From what i can gather, the laptop has two SO-DIMM slots that take DDR2 533mhz.......whatever that means. But i don't know if this means i can either have 1GB in one slot or two 512MB in two slots.

As you can tell, i don't really know what i'm talking about, any help would be much appreciated.

Solitaire

AFAIK that laptop (like many) has two smaller sticks installed already. If you want to increase its memory you'll have to bin some or all of the stuff already in there to make room for the new sticks. Also, you could probably get away with faster 667MHz DDR2 in that laptop, as its a recent C2D model with a 166MHZ bus speed (i.e. FSB667).

If you want 2GB here's a kit. If you want 4GB (only 3.25GB useable in 32-bit Windows) look here. There may be cheaper out there but these guys seem to ship quickly and cheaply (usually €5-8 p&p).

gnolan

Solitaire wrote: »

AFAIK that laptop (like many) has two smaller sticks installed already. If you want to increase its memory you'll have to bin some or all of the stuff already in there to make room for the new sticks. Also, you could probably get away with faster 667MHz DDR2 in that laptop, as its a recent C2D model with a 166MHZ bus speed (i.e. FSB667).

If you want 2GB here's a kit. If you want 4GB (only 3.25GB useable in 32-bit Windows) look here. There may be cheaper out there but these guys seem to ship quickly and cheaply (usually €5-8 p&p).

Firstly, i have no problem really in throwing away any existing memory if i'm upgrading. Is there any risk with using 667MHz RAM when the laptop is designed for 533MHz? Like i say, i know very little about this area.

Ideally i'd love to get 4GB of RAM but i don't know if my computer can be expanded to 4 gigs. I think i remember seeing in the manual that each slot can either take 512MB or 1GB DDR2 533MHz. I'm not sure how hard and fast this is. Can you simply ignore this and stick 2GB in each slot?

Thanks for the help

Solitaire

I heard that the Si1848 is one of those laptops that only have one SODIMM slot easily accessible, with the other under the keyboard neccessitating the disassembly of virtually the entire machine :mad:

Worse still, its verified that Fujitsu are using hacked BIOSes to cripple their laptop's chipsets :mad: Why the [CENSORED] [CENSORED] would they do such a thing?! In any case I don't think anyone has a compatible BIOS to uncripple the machine (other Amilos use Alienware BIOSes to restore chipset functionality, but not the Si1848) So for some reason your modern laptop has been crippled to force it to use less, older, slower memory. Gee, thanks Fujitsu, you just reminded me why I don't touch your tripe with a bargepole!

In any case getting 2*1GB sticks of 667MHz is fine, if the dodgy BIOS won't let you use them at full speed they'll just run slower without issue. No point in getting a 2*2GB kit as one stick won't be useable thanks to the dodgy BIOS :mad:

gnolan

Solitaire wrote: »

I heard that the Si1848 is one of those laptops that only have one SODIMM slot easily accessible, with the other under the keyboard neccessitating the disassembly of virtually the entire machine :mad:

Worse still, its verified that Fujitsu are using hacked BIOSes to cripple their laptop's chipsets :mad: Why the [CENSORED] [CENSORED] would they do such a thing?! In any case I don't think anyone has a compatible BIOS to uncripple the machine (other Amilos use Alienware BIOSes to restore chipset functionality, but not the Si1848) So for some reason your modern laptop has been crippled to force it to use less, older, slower memory. Gee, thanks Fujitsu, you just reminded me why I don't touch your tripe with a bargepole!

In any case getting 2*1GB sticks of 667MHz is fine, if the dodgy BIOS won't let you use them at full speed they'll just run slower without issue. No point in getting a 2*2GB kit as one stick won't be useable thanks to the dodgy BIOS :mad:

Riiiggghhht! Don't understand a lot of that, but being the perceptive individual that i am, it would appear that i'm buggered!

If i can't access one of the memory modules, is there any point in getting 2 1GB sticks? Would i not end up with one existing 512MB card and a 1GB card? Is it even possible to use 2 different sizes of RAM together?

Solitaire

You can access them both, just that one of them might be a real bugger getting to

thehamo

if I upgrade the ram on my laptop will I loose much from my computer? And if so, what kind of things??

Solitaire

You shouldn't lose anything by upgrading the RAM.