computer woes

[wormraper]

gah, I built my computer a little over 4 years ago. today one of my two 2-gig ram sticks went out on me. check on newegg and it's $64 for another 4 gigs of ram or $45 for another 2 gig stick to replace the one I lost. It's freaking $45-$50 for 8 gigs of modern ram....sheesh. if I hand't just done a TON of home repair stuff and bought a new plasma I'd just rebuild the whole darn thing. (tempted thought, but $900 isn't something I wanna just yank out of savings when I can just replace the ram )

[nefilim]

you dont happen to have friendly IT dept. ? I just yesterday gave away 4 x 512Mb DDR2 Rams - have plenty of rams laying around ... so when able to help will help people at our office. PCs (withour warranty) broke all the time and spare Rams, HHDs, Nics etc fill the shelves.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by nefilim

you dont happen to have friendly IT dept. ? I just yesterday gave away 4 x 512Mb DDR2 Rams - have plenty of rams laying around ... so when able to help will help people at our office. PCs (withour warranty) broke all the time and spare Rams, HHDs, Nics etc fill the shelves.

I got a few resources I can pull, but this is an old machine to begin with, if I can get some leftover ram for ultra cheap or free I can salvage it for a while, otherwise it's time for a new machine. (memtest just gave me back 44 errors on a couple hours of testing.)

[PrivatePixel]

Originally Posted by wormraper

I got a few resources I can pull, but this is an old machine to begin with, if I can get some leftover ram for ultra cheap or free I can salvage it for a while, otherwise it's time for a new machine. (memtest just gave me back 44 errors on a couple hours of testing.)

If it's DDR2 RAM (most likely, seeing as it's from a 4-year old machine), then yes, it won't be cheap because they're not being manufactured anymore.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by PrivatePixel

If it's DDR2 RAM (most likely, seeing as it's from a 4-year old machine), then yes, it won't be cheap because they're not being manufactured anymore.

yup, good ole DDR2 1066 PC8500 ram. I can get 4 more gigs for about $70 . but the thing is that the OTHER stick of ram went through memtest for 10 hours and just came back without an error. computer is STILL giving me this same crap. blech. looking more and more like a motherboard failure too

[PrivatePixel]

Originally Posted by wormraper

yup, good ole DDR2 1066 PC8500 ram. I can get 4 more gigs for about $70 . but the thing is that the OTHER stick of ram went through memtest for 10 hours and just came back without an error. computer is STILL giving me this same crap. blech. looking more and more like a motherboard failure too

Can you elaborate on the issues with your current PC, i.e. BSOD, random reboots, etc.?

If you suspect that the motherboard may be going bad, buying a DDR2-based replacement would be considerably cheaper than taking the DDR3 upgrade route. Sure, the selection out there isn't great (mostly ASRock, Biostar and Intel, at least on Amazon), but if you have a good stick of RAM, I figure maybe ~$100 for a replacement mobo and additional RAM, or you can start saving for a DDR3 build.