Quick Question regarding RAM

[andyturpie]

Morning quick question if you please.

 

If you run a 32bit OS and have a single 8gb DDR stick in could this cause stability/freezing issues?

 

I was always under the impression that DDR should be installed in identical pairs ie. 2x4gb sticks (with the option to remove a stick until 64bit migration).

 

Any thoughts and comments welcome!

[plexer]

Shouldn't do it won't be able to address all that ram though.

 

Pairs are used to run in dual channel mode.

 

Ben

[andyturpie]

Hi Ben, cheers for the response, which is for a friend who works in another school, knew about the 4gb ceiling, but was wondering if having a single stick which half cannot be addressed would cause issues?

I think he may be contacting the suppliers for a RAM swap if this is the case?

[Hefferzzzz]

4gb is the most it will recognise/utilise Edited August 22, 2013 by Hefferzzzz

[3s-gtech]

Rather than swapping the RAM, ditch the OS, 64 bit is mainstream now! 4GB is fine for most classroom applications, but we're consistently seeing it as not enough when doing work with large media files (AV and images).

 

To be honest though, I wouldn't see this causing stability issues. A single stick will be slower as it won't be in dual channel mode, but the OS will happily run with the larger stick. More likely a duff stick, or the motherboard is flaky with modules that size (I've seen a few Core 2 machines like this).