what are these things in my ram slots???

**zskillz** · July 21st, 2002, 01:39 AM

hahha... here's the deal. My younger brother just got a dell PC. it has 256 MB of pc800 ram in it (rdram). He wants to upgrade to 512, so I figured that should be easy enough... I opened up the box to see if he had open slots and this is where things got confusing

all four of the slots are taken up. the first two slots have what look like actual rdram in them.... (there is a silver thingy on one side of each stick)

the second two slots have what I originally thought were basically just some sort of placeholders or something (i thought to maybe alleviate dust or something). Now I'm unfamiliar with rdram, but these thingies have the little gold connects on the pcb that fit into the slots, other than that, there is little else on the entire stick... no silver attached thingy or anything. I took them out to see if the computer would boot without them, but I get some error beeps. and it wont boot... since it comes from dell, they blank out the POST screen too somehow, so I can't even see if it will post...

can anyone tell me what the heck is going on here?

thanks
-Z

**originel** · July 21st, 2002, 01:43 AM

basically they are overglorified place-holders. the thing about rdram is it has to have continuity between all the slots, so they just add thse fillers in to make things happy (i have no idea why they did this). if you want to add more ram, just take them out and replace them with real ram and you shouldn't have any problems.

EDIT: make sure to get the right speed, and also try and get good quality ram (click the crucial.com link on this site).

**zskillz** · July 21st, 2002, 01:57 AM

originel... thank you for the help. I had a feeling that it was something like that, but I would rather be safe then sorry. so is that the case for all mobos that use RDRAM?

-Z

-sheesh... that is so ghetto I think... what are you supposed to do when you build your own computer?? can you buy rdram "placeholders" or whatever they're acutally called?

**Chiguy** · July 21st, 2002, 02:50 AM

That should be the case with all mobos that use RDRAM.

**AuraEdge** · July 21st, 2002, 03:27 AM

I dont know what thier called, but they are in fact terminators. All the ends of the contacts needs to be terminated (At least on the i820 chipset..I dont know if its still like that with the i850). As Originel said, its for continuity sakes and that there are no open ends.

EDIT - Apparently they do sell them. Thier called CRIMMs, or Continuity Rambus Inline Memory Module. Its basically a 0MB stick of RAMBUS. You can pricewatch CRIMM if you wanna see what the prices on a 0MB stick of RAMBUS costs.

EDIT2 - http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1534&p=2

The i850 supports dual channel RDRAM, with two RIMM’s per channel, giving us the four RIMM slots we see on all i850 motherboards. The dual channel setup also means that you have to install RDRAM in matched pairs. Because RDRAM is a serial technology, you have to install the modules in the proper slots and fill unused slots with continuity RIMM’s (CRIMM’s).

**thekingofpain** · July 21st, 2002, 11:47 AM

When you purchase RDRAM you usually get the crimm with it...

**Xeroid** · July 21st, 2002, 04:36 PM

O.K. thekinkofpain, silly question here. I haven't messed with Intell since I built my slot 1 PIII 550. Let's say you've got 4 slots on a new mobo that you purchaced to build a system with. Do any crimm modules come with the mobo? Or do you get 2 RDRAM modules and 2 crimm modules when you order the memory?

Mike

**Skywalker[TSG]** · July 21st, 2002, 05:28 PM

The motherboard should have 2 or more CRIMMS already installed depending on how many slots it has

a MSI i850 mobo that i worked on just a couple of weeks ago had 4 slots and had 2 CRIMMS installed.

**Skywalker[TSG]** · July 21st, 2002, 05:29 PM

You wont get any CRIMMS when you order RIMMS because you replace the CRIMMS with the RIMMS so there's no need to send more CRIMMS together with the RIMMS

**Xeroid** · July 21st, 2002, 05:33 PM

Thanks, Skywalker.

Mike

**Skywalker[TSG]** · July 21st, 2002, 05:35 PM

No worries mate

**lynchmob** · July 21st, 2002, 05:59 PM

Simms
dimms
rimms
crimms
Everything that I currently know about rdram was revealed to me in this thread

Thanks everybody.
lynch

**Xeroid** · July 21st, 2002, 06:11 PM

LOL lynchmob.

Mike

**zskillz** · July 22nd, 2002, 03:01 AM

thanks for all the help guys... clearly i've been out of the loop for a while.... my most recent purchase was a laptop, so there isn't much that I get to choose really on that one....

before that, I built my machine that is still a bad-a$$ --- dual celeronI 366@550!!!

hahah.. old school, I know, but it works.. and since I don't have enough money for a really good graphics card...I can't let games get in the way of schoolwork

-Z

**FlyingHamster** · July 22nd, 2002, 04:38 AM

speaking of ram slots, I have a question about them. Is it bad to put ram sticks into different slots, not by each other? for example, would it be bad for me to stick one ram stick in the second slot and the second stick in the 3rd slot? j/w...

**Theophylact** · July 22nd, 2002, 10:22 AM

Depends on the motherboard. On most newish boards, no problem. On Pentium boards using SIMMs, with some exceptions, you had to install them in matched pairs. With DIMMs, I don't think it mattered, although you may have had to put DIMMS with more memory in lower-numbered slots than those with less memory.

**thekingofpain** · July 22nd, 2002, 11:39 PM

Got that wrong---both rambus boards I recieved had been handled by the same person, plastic sleeved crimms were tossed in with the mem---sorry to add confusion...

**sKiT** · July 23rd, 2002, 03:41 PM

FlyingHampster: It all depends on the motherboard. One of my fisrt builds a couple years ago required a RAM chip in slot #1 for it to POST. Most the boards Ive dealt with latley seem to not require that now .