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I'm building a super cheap retro-ish miniPC for Windows 7, mainly aiming at co-op couch gaming, and trying to use used parts off of ebay wherever possible to do my part to reduce the net sum of e-waste floating around. I've already got a Core 2 Quad Q9400 coming in, an Intel DG45FC mini-ITX motherboard coming in, a low profile 95W cooler for LGA775 coming in, and I'll eventually be getting a new 300W flex-ATX PSU for it because used power supplies scare me. I want to eventually buy two 4GB DDR2 800MHz sticks for it, but for now I think I've got some 1GB or 2GB sticks laying around somewhere to get it up and running. I've also got a GT-1030 to pair with it for now, and all of this will be packed into a Velka 3 case I've been sitting on, with a 500GB SATA SSD. My issues/questions are these: 1. The motherboard in question only has a x1 PCIe slot, and the GT-1030 uses up to 4 PCIe lanes if what I've read is correct. It's already a little underpowered for 1080p gaming with that CPU, around a 13% GPU bottleneck, but will the x1 lane limitation make a meaningful dent in it's already modest performance? I have the appropriate riser coming in, I just don't know what to expect. 2. Given that x1 PCIe slot limitation, albeit with a x1-x16 riser, what low power ITX graphics card could I upgrade to later, considering it needs to be powered off of the slot, fit in the Velka 3, and have Windows 7 drivers? 3. How tolerant of lower RAM speeds are motherboards, generally? This one is specced for DDR2 800MHz and 677MHz, but would it hypothetically work with slower RAM if that's all I have on hand, as an interem configuration to get it up and running? Those questions and concerns aside, if anyone has any advice or ideas they'd like to share, please feel free.

Hi, I recently got my my hands on an old HP XWX4600 workstation for free, and decided that I would try to upgrade it with cheap parts and give it to a friend. I've upgraded the CPU from the included E8500 to a Q9550 and I've got a GTX 760 to replace the FX4600. Now for the RAM, it came preinstalled with 4x 1GB sticks and I figured that would like to double it to 8GB, so I went ahead and looked up what type of RAM I needed and ordered 2x 4GB sticks off ebay with this title: 4GB PARITY RAM PC2-6400P DDR2 800 IBM HP 499277-061 MICRON MT36HTFS51272PZ-80EH1 I went ahead and installed them, but the FMB-0702 motherboard would just give me memory-related error codes during POST. I'm guessing that I misread the specifications and ordered the wrong type of RAM, so I'm hoping that I could get some help and figure out exactly what type I need. Bonus question: The included 250GB HDD is pretty sluggish, would getting a cheap SSD help with this or would the SATA2 interface just bottleneck it? Thanks in advance!

Hey all, I'm a photographer and PC geek looking to put together a simple backup NAS for my assets and pictures. I saw Anthony's video on using an old Dell with a 3770k and 16gb of Ddr3 with some drives, to make a little server. I do have an old Dell in the closet. However would it have enough power? It's an Intel Q6600 4 core, with 8gb of Ddr2. Thinking of putting a few 10tb drives. I am looking to do the following: - Automatically backup a certain drive on my main PC. - Access the files remotely from my phone or laptop using the browser. - Do photo backups from my phone to the server to a folder. - Have redundancy in the event that a drive fails I know this can be accomplished with plug-ins but I wouldn't want to overload the system. I'm thinking of using unraid or Truenas. Any input would be greatly appreciated, suggested plug-ins, thoughts, experience. I'm pretty new to the whole server thing!

Hello Guys Can somebody please tell me why the kingston KTM5780 (DDR2 ECC 4Gb) ram stick does not fit in this motherboard witch supports ddr2 ecc ram? Maybea im just blind but i have no clue Thanks for answers! :)

is the performance between these chips significant? ( E5450 vs E5440 || X5450 vs X5440 ) which one would you suggest?(please include Reasoning) Specs: 6gb of ddr2 (kvr800) P43 neo-F Deepcool ice edge 200T R5 240 1gb ddr3 (hd 8570)

I have a amd athlon(tm) ii X2 245 processor (64bit) I have 4 GB ddr2 ram(2*2) My mother board supports only ddr2 and has 2 slots only.(I'm struck yikes) I want to know, should I run Windows 10 32bit or 64bit version? Which will be smoother and stable. It came with windows xp service pack 3(32bit os version) My parents lost their job and now it is particularly difficult for me to attend online class on windows xp. At least I have internet Other specs: 240gb sata ssd (gigabyte) monitor : 1080p Acer P225HQ I wonder how my pc runs without graphics card and igpu (maybe this is a fascinating separate question on its own) This is my first question on ltt fourm

I want to buy more of this ram (image 1) on eBay and I found this on eBay (image 2). everything is the same except the voltage and the version number. I have 1.8V ver4.2. the seller has 1.9V ver3.1 could this be a problem?

This a PC part lot that I got for 100 dollars and I have no idea if anything works.... I will find out later and post about it again! When I first pulled to this house to buy these parts, I was already a little sketched out considering the location I was at and I was somewhere I was not familiar. The person selling all these components had found them in the basement of a house that she was currently flipping. When I first got all of this, I was super pumped. Considering that all of my stuff I buy is second hand and i'm just starting out in the PC world. First impression was awesome. It looked like it all would work. Once I got home I realized how gross all the stuff. The graphics card had so much corrosion on it, i'll include a pic. The Gigabyte motherboard box had like rat poop in it. Some of the DDR2 ram had this bug in like a sac in it, that looked like a little worm. Some of the other ram just looked like someone put gel in it and touch it with dirty hands. The hard drive ports were a little destroyed. I cleaned it all up and tried to get it to worked, but sadly it wouldn't. It was all pretty gross, I definitely washed my hands after this. Memory (DDR3) -OCZ 2gb (2) -G.Skill RipJawsX 2gb (3) -Corsair Vengeance 8gb (2) -Bunch of DDR2 Ram Graphics Card -Vapor-x Radeon HD 5770 Hard Drive -Seagate barracuda 1500 gb Mother Boards -Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P -ASUS M5A 78L-M Also got a evga 6 pin power cable ********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* UPDATE Sadly not all of this worked. I'll make a list of what did and didn't. I actually got my money back and just bought the Asus motherboard for 10 dollars and she gave me some of the ram back to see if I could get it too work. The graphics card she gave to me for free. In the end it worked out good. Memory (DDR3) -OCZ 2gb (2) (didn't work) -G.Skill RipJawsX 2gb (3) (didn't work) -Corsair Vengeance 8gb (2) (didn't work) -Bunch of DDR2 Ram (I didn't have anything to test it on) Graphics Card -Vapor-x Radeon HD 5770 (Worked) Hard Drive -Seagate barracuda 1500 gb (didn't work) Mother Boards -Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P (didn't work) -ASUS M5A 78L-M (I assumed it works) ********Pictures of the components after closer inspection*******

Tried posting this on the reddit TechSupport but a bot automatically took it down and a mod later answered with "old hardware and software go cope somewhere else, byebye xoxo" Also tried on PCMR, also got removed but with no explanation this time. So I came here with the hope of finally being heard. Some months ago I acquired a Compaq desktop pc for dirt cheap due to it having issues, I had the idea to have it as somewhat of a light/retro gaming machine and maybe throw in something like a GT710/30, to natively run some old OS's and games, it came with some version of Windows XP. First issue was it wouldn't turn on, replaced the CMOS battery and it started working again, then when booting it took as much as an hour to get to the desktop. Took almost just as much time booting from a usb to a linux distro (after ram change it works perfectly with anything linux related). It just was a defective ram stick (DDR2 1.8V), and a few days ago I got to buy a few sticks to upgrade my mother's pc which has similar specs and got two extra sticks for this project. Now is where the issue comes, at first I tried installing some distros, I already knew the MoBo mounted gpu is barely compatible with anything modern since my mother pc has the same, so I tried the ones I already knew to be working with it, no issues there, but then I tried to install Windows Vista, since I have both keys for home prem and basic, and was welcomed by an extremely slow loading speed, about 20 minutes to get to the "select language" page, tried both 64 and 32 bit images, tried Windows 7 64 and 32 bit images, Windows XP SP2/3, even Windows 10 64 and 32 bits images, tried multiple usb ports, tried disconnecting everything, even the the motherboard from the case, even disconnected the PS/2 keyboard, same result. Searching through some forums I got a few answers about the bios where having "Floppy A" as enabled could make the pc run at floppy disk speed and some stuff about AMD K8 energy management, but none of those worked. Already checked the SATA cables, tested the HDD on another pc with almost identical hardware, and even tried a different HDD on this machine, the issue only seems to be happening to this machine. Also tried installing Windows vista on the other machine, got it done in about 30 minutes total, got the HDD to the troubled machine and it spent about as much time just in the loading bar screen. I already ran out of ideas so that's why I came here to ask. This are the specs of the troubled computer: Motherboard MCP61PM-HM Rev 1.0b (Bios Rev 5.25) AMD Athlon X2 4050e Dual-Core @ 2111MHz 2 sticks of DDR2 2GB 1.8V PC2-5300 ram Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE SATA WesternDigital 160Gb WD1600AAJS SATA Lightscribe DVD-R Noganet 550W PSU Specs of the properly working machine Motherboard Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual-Core @ 2400MHz 2 sticks of DDR2 2GB 1.8V PC2-5300 ram Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE SATA Samsung 250Gb HD251HJ SATA LG DVD-R Biswal 400W PSU Thanks in advance for anyone checking!

So I got my hands on an old laptop , a friend gave it to me cause he did not to want to throw it in the trashcan. It is working about as you would expect from an old laptop with a dual core pentium and 2gb of ram. Since I have a LOT of ddr2 lying around I thought I would pimp it out so it would run 32bit mint like a boss. But it does post with anything more than 2 gb, either 1 or 2 sticks. I made sure the ram sticks were not conflicting. They had the same model number , frequency etc... Is it a motherboard limitation or a cpu one ? The model is Sony vaio PCG - 7y1m. Could I update the bios and be fine ? its pretty old , updating bios must be a nightmare. Also could a cpu swap solve that, it is socket p.

Hi, So I am currently trying to build a PC some may refer as prehistoric. After scavenging all the necessary parts from old/discarded computers, I built one myself. Here were the specs: - Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-945GCM - CPU: Intel Celeron 430 - PSU: 500W (local brand, see pic below) - Memory: 1 stick, Transcend 2GB 800Mhz DDR2 (see pic) - Storage: 120GB Kingston SA400S37 (taken from my current pc, used as the boot up drive, contains Windows 10) After assembling the pc, everting worked fine. I was able to boot up and, after connecting a wireless PCI adapter, I could access the internet. However, it was incredibly slow! I decided to make some minor upgrades to that the PC could be a little more usable. Here were the upgrades I made: (keep in mind that all of these components were either bought as second-hand or scavenged) - Memory: 2 sticks, 2GB DDR2 KINGMAX KLDE88F-B8KU5Y - CPU: Intel Pentium 2.66GHz 2M Processor 805 (not sure if this is the right link tho because it doesn't say pentium D on my cpu, see pic of mine below) - Also added thermal paste (Arctic MX-4) After re-assembling everything, I tried booting up but the pc would shut down mid-boot up. The chain of events are as follow: 1. I press the power button 2. The fans starts spinning 3. There is the usual beep 4. Boot up, BIOS appears on the screen allowing me to choose the drive to boot up from 5. Then BAM! Shut down! (Note: sometimes it would shut down a few seconds after the power button is pressed... as I said, random) Here's everything I tried doing so far: - Switched power outlet - Changed power cords - Cleaned every components using compressed air - Quintuple checked all of the connection - Disconnected all of the non-essential components for boot up (in my case, the SSD and wireless PCI adapter) - Replaced the PSU (twice) - Re-applied new thermal paste - Shouted at my PC - Took out and put back in the RAM stick - Changed the CMOS battery - Now here's the strange part: I switched back to the Celeron and everything worked fine again. Does this mean that the Pentium CPU is faulty in anyway? Is there any compatibility issue I've overlooked? Does my cooling system need to be upgraded?

I was checking out an Asus Maximus II Formula board, looked at max memory saying its 16 gb and was mindblown when I checked in the memory support list. Samsung made 4 gb sticks of (non ecc, unbuffered) ddr2 memory. I went up on ebay but I couldnt find any of that kind, just specific for amd ram... Can you guys help me to find some? If I find 4, then Im buying the board too just for lolz

Bought a 4gb kit of 2 x 2gb dimms and when inserted the system doesn't post even though my stick of ddr2 1Rx8 pc2-4200u works?

realy I am looking for a friend my pc is good it has i5 4590 24gb of ddr3 ram msi 970 4gb but my friend has athlon 64x2 yeah that bad budget is 500tl (75dollars rightnow) we are looking for a new motherboard and a cpu and motherboard needs to have ddr2 ram support he's pc is realy bad and yeah in Turkey its hard so thats why the budget is low and we are looking for 2. hand componets because new ones wont fit to budget

Hello all! Long time no see! Currently I'm working on slightly upgrading my "new" pc (x5450, 7870, 6GB ram) by adding more ram to the system. Now the problem is that I'm not really all that knowledgeable on DDR2 Ram and buying it used on Ebay is confusing me a little bit. I can't just buy a single stick as I currently have 4 sticks in my system equaling 6GBs and its throwing off errors and it's just not enough (I also think it's holding back my overclocking a bit). So now, my question is when it comes to looking for good DDR2 ram, what brand should I look for? Samsung or hynix? I know my motherboard supports DDR2 1066 but I think DDR2 800 is fine and also, a lot of the listing say stuff like "AMD system only" or "AMD ram" would this matter? I know a lot of what you'll see on ebay is old server stuff and I'm fine with that. Any help would be appreciated greatly and I'm looking forward to being back on the forum after my long hiatus! System specs that matter: Intel xeon x5450 3.5GHZ Radeon 7870 (horrible overclocker btw) 4GB Samsung 800 ram 2GB gskil rip jaws 800 ram Intel 535 ssd Oct triton 480 ssd

Finally on my 10th year of owning my Sony VGN-NR120E, I've come to the point of installing 6GB of RAM. When my VGN-NR120E was new in 2007 it came with 1GB of DDR2, after a year I upgraded to 2GB, then some 4 years later I bumped it up to 3GB. In 2014 when I upgraded the CPU, mobo, SSD, and GPU I popped in another 2GB DIMM for a total of 4GB. Now in the year 2017 I have a total of 6GB, a combo of 4GB of Hynix and 2GB of Crucial. Why is this remarkable you ask? My laptop originally came with a GL960 northbridge that could only officially support 2GB of RAM. Some Dell and Sony laptops with these chips were higher binned and were capable of running 3GB of RAM along with higher FSB 45nm Core 2 Duos. Currently I have the PM965 northbridge which only officially supports 4GB of RAM, while I am using 6GB of DDR2 not to mention an overclocked extreme edition CPU. This is another instance of Sony receiving higher binned chips from Intel. If you're lucky enough to still own a Sony VGN-NR series laptop I encourage you to try this RAM upgrade. 6GB of RAM really wakes this laptop up with current applications and workloads. If you own any laptop with the PM965 northbridge it's worth a shot to try this RAM upgrade, maybe a CPU while you're at it. The total cost of the upgrade was $15 thanks to Free Greek Minneapolis. They looked through every laptop that came in the door for months to find the 4GB DIMM that made this upgrade possible.

So i remember hearing/being told Ram wasnt really a bottleneck however i saw this Video the other day right now im running a Q9400, overclocked to 3.6ghz (450FSB). my rams running at 900mhz with 8gb, i was considering upgrading to 1066mhz ram so i could overclock higher safely (ifi could get it on the cheap). i was wondering if my ram would be a big bottleneck. im running it with a gtx 970 (i know my GPU is bottlenecked to hell, my FX pc crapped out so i scrapped together a beautiful 775 rig from various sources while i wait for Zen) im basicly hopping to max out the performance out of this,as a hobby, and for performance

Would having a SSD in a DDR2 rig help? It only supports up to 3GB/s on the motherboard

Hi, I'm building a budget box for my nephew and i'm really confused on the RAM compatibility for the Intel Q8200 (LGA775 SOCKET), will it support both DDR2 and DDR3 (including motherboard compatibility)? Thank you in advance.

Hey all, So, I've been trying to upgrade my sister's computer. It's a Dell Inspiron 518 with a Core 2 Duo E7500 and 2Gb of DDR2 I recently learned of the little 771 Xeon trick that makes them compatable with Socket T, and so I bought some more memory and an x5460 to throw in. The problem is, the motherboard HATES this memory. Everytime I try to put a stick in, it beeps at me and doesn't post. The memory I'm trying to use is this: http://txmicro.com/Kingston-KC6844-ELG37-1GB-DDR2-PC2-4200-p-5034.html Somebody please help

Difference between DDR1 DDR2 DDR3 DDR4 Ram in desktop and laptop. Please explain in a simple way.

What's the deal with DDR2 800mHz RAM having AMD specific modules? Also, why is 2x4BG of the AMD only stuff 1/4 the cost of "standard" DDR2?

The two on the right with no label, just the etching on the individual modules. They're identical, so one is flipped over so you can see both sides. What the crap is this stuff? I have no ddr2 board to put it in... Any way to find out? No prize except bragging rights.

Hi, due to the fact that I still work with an inspiron 1545 with just 2gb of ddr2 ram (and probably will work on it next year even with dead mousepad and battery, halfworking keyboard and very slow hard disk). I was wondering where ppl get stuff of very old models like mine at very low prices (I´ve seen some youtube videos of ppl building PCs with under 200 bucks). In my area I would have to throw like 250 US Dollar or more to repair und upgrade it so its not worth. Ebay seems good , but then u think of scams or just broken parts being sold. I would like to restore it so I can work on it until I replace it and then donate it to a school or a person without laptop.

Hello everyone, As part of my of schools student council we are sponsoring a family for christmas that doesn't have very much. I managed to put together and old computer with 2-gigabytes of DDR2, a core two duo dual core, and two 80-gigabyte hard drives so the children can have something to do school work on. I was wondering if it could even run Windows 10 as my friend has an extra he is willing to donate. Currently the PC is running Zorin OS, but I don't feel comfortable giving them a Linux systems since it is a bit more complex than Windows. Will it run 10, or should I look for a 7 or Vista Key? Thanks for your responses, it will really help us make this families holiday season better!