- Do You Need To Fill All Ram Slots
- Do You Have To Fill All Ram Slots Needed
- Do You Have To Fill All Ram Slots Online
I've got an Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard. Today I tried adding some new RAM to take it from 4GB to 8GB. The board is about 6 years' old. I've never used the black RAM slots before, only the yellow ones (2x2GB in slots 1 and 3).
My system only sees 6GB, not 8GB. I've tried various combinations of the RAM, get the same result.
To check the new RAM wasn't defective, I tried it in slot 1, a known good slot. All 4 sticks of RAM worked in slot 1, so the RAM wasn't faulty.
All 4 sticks work in every slot except slot 2 (the first black RAM slot). If I put any stick in slot 2 - old or new - the PC is dead, it won't even boot to the BIOS.
So it looks like I have a defective RAM slot.
Does anyone know of any way to fix this? The board is too old to RMA. I've tried an emery board down the defective slot, and I've tried squirting WD40 down it. No improvement.
Does anyone have any other ideas on how to get that bad slot working?
Thanks!
Do You Need To Fill All Ram Slots
No, will be better w/ 4x8GB, less stress on the MC (memory controller) with only 4 sticks and ever so slightly better performance, only fill all slots if maxing out the DRAM 0.
Alternately referred to as multi-channel memory, dual-channel memory is a DDR, DDR2, or DDR3 chipset on the motherboard providing RAM with two dedicated high-throughput data channels. The channels permit reading from and writing to memory to occur on distinct channels.
To take advantage of a dual-channel platform when purchasing memory make sure to buy memory in identical pairs. For example, if you wanted to upgrade to an additional 2 GB of memory. Buy two 1 GB memory modules that are exactly identical. While each memory chip's speed doesn't need to be the same as the others, it's best to install memory with matching speeds. If the speeds differ, the motherboard runs the memory chips at the speed of the slowest chip.
Finally, if you are only installing two memory modules at a time make sure the memory is installed into the proper memory slots. Almost always the memory slots will be color-coded to indicate the memory channel, as shown in the picture below. The first channel is often slots one and two, and the second channel is three and four. When installing memory in pairs make sure to install them into the same colored slot to take advantage of the dual-channel platform.
As can be assumed by the names, triple-channel architecture triples the available memory bandwidth and Quad-channel architecture quadruples the memory bandwidth. As with dual-channel architecture memory should be installed in a set of three or four depending on the architecture of the motherboard.
Do You Have To Fill All Ram Slots Needed
How do I know if dual-channel is active?
In other words, do you have to fill all 4 memory slots or are 2 filled slots sufficient? Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 176 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. There are also memory channel population tips that affect bus speed. Using 3 to 6 DIMMs per CPU is going to be faster than running with all 18 slots populated. RAM can be seen by both CPUs, but you have to popular on both sides if you have two CPUs. Reply back with your setup, and we can help optimize. If you're not filling all the available RAM channels, read your motherboard's manual to see which specific slots you should fill first. Placing RAM in the incorrect slots could result in some.
When active your initial boot screen that displays your memory speeds and capacity should show 'Dual Channel' or 'Dual Channel Interleaved' somewhere in the memory settings. Alternatively, software programs like CPU-Z can also detect and display this information.
I have four memory chips, do they all need to be the same?
For dual-channel, you only need to install memory in pairs. All four memory sticks do not need to be the same, only the pairs need to be the same and installed in their proper memory slots.