How much RAM can I upgrade to?

Question

I desperately need to upgrade my RAM from 256MB but I've been told that some systems only can be increased to certain level. (some systems can only go to 512MB others 2GB)

Is this correct?

And if so, how do I find out what my max RAM capability is?

Answer 1

This is based on your motherboard specs.  Check the data sheet from the motherboard manufacturer.  

Answer 2

If you know your motherboard model, you can go to the manufacturer's web site and it will tell you for sure.

You can also try using the "memory calculator" at http://www.crucial.com which can scan and detect the MB model and give you memory configuration for most motherboards.

Answer 3

The new version of Mac OS  (Snow Leopard) can support up to a theoretical 16 Terabytes, or 16,000 Gigabytes. Hypothetically, if anyone every could afford that much ram. But, it would be best to research that on Google, because it varies from system to system.

Answer 4

If your computer is like a prebuilt (dell, gateway, whatever), goto their website and look up your model number in support and look for the specifications (or google it), and look up the maximum amount you can upgrade the ram to. Most of the time it will say something like, Upgradeable to blah gigabytes. If it is a custom built no-name brand, look up the model number of the motherboard and look for it's specs. It will tell you the same way.

Answer 5

a Dodge ram.

Answer 6

you need to know exactly what motorboard it is, then surf the manufactures web pages.

or look up the motherboard manual, if you have it.

Answer 7

You'll have to check the specs for your system.  If its a premade system, like Dell or Compaq, HP, you can search their support web sites for the memory specs.  There are a few good tools also, I've used the Crucial System Scanner tool, www.crucial.com, and that told me what current is, and max would be.  Also, your OS is dependant on max ram.  any 32-bit os cannot use above 2GB (I think)....because I heard some were upgrading to XP 64-bit to use 4GB.  If you have a comp that only had 256, its probably rather old, and you'd only want to up it to 512 anyway.

READ THIS BEFORE USING CRUCIAL SCAN!

Ok, I want to revise my answer, because I just tryed running crucial's scan.  I'm using Firefox, so the activex control won't work with that, so crucial suggested I download a stand alone program that will do the same thing.  Upon running that, I got a blue screen of death, and reboot, with a failure: WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM is missing or corrupt,  Windows cannot start.

So, after playing around for 2 hours getting recovery console up and remembering my admin password, I managed to get the registry recovered...  System back.  IN short, don't download and run the stand alone!  I'm running XP64 if that made a difference I don't know, but I'll be contacting crucial about this!