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can you boot without ram

tedjani
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Posted

I don't think so since everything you use is on the ram. 

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Posted

no. at idle computers use over 1gb

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Even if you could, there's no good reason why you should. You would severely cripple your system's speed.

 

RAM is intended as a cache for various files used by your programs when they need it. While a program runs, it temporarily dumps information it needs into your RAM so that it can be called upon significantly faster than if it were to be pulled from your HDD, or even an SSD. This information is constantly being deleted and overwritten as you work or play. When your system runs out of RAM to use, it must rely on your drives to call on the needed information, which will noticeably impact the total performance of your system.

 

tl;dr: Don't run without RAM. Doesn't matter if it's possible or not. Even just a 2GB stick is better than nothing at all.

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no. at idle computers use over 1gb

LOL not all do...

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PC will not post bios or video w/o ram.

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Posted

Not really, no.

In theory, if you rewrote the BIOS to use the hard drive as cache after the CPU, it would be technically possible. But it can't be done without writing your own custom BIOS, no computer has this functionality by default. And you would have to basically write support for a SATA controller into the BIOS.

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I still have a working computer with 128MB RAM... (collection, not main machine..)

That would be an older system with an older OS which would require less ram. Windows 7 will use usually over 1GB wheras Windows 95 required only 4MB to and was recommended to use with 8MB.

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