How to Determine How Many RAM Modules a Computer Holds

Video Transcript

"If your computer is running slow one of the easiest things you can do to make it faster is upgrade the RAM in the computer. Hi, I'm Charles Stewart Jr, and I'm going to show you how to find out many RAM modules your computer holds. First thing you want to do is, well, one of the easiest ways to go about it is to go online. If you go to like - this particular computer is one I built, so I would go to the motherboard's website and find out how much RAM that particular motherboard holds, or if you have a Dell or an HP or something like that, you can go to their website and look up in their support section and find your model number and it should tell you how many RAM slots that you have in your computer. But let's say you know you're unsure or you have a computer also that was built by someone else, you're not exactly sure how many RAM modules are in it. So the easiest thing to do is just look for it yourself. The first thing I'm going to do is take off the door - on some computers it's easy, you just push a button, and it'll come right off. But for this one, we got to take it off. I'm just using a Phillip's Head screwdriver. And for the sake of the demonstration I've already removed most of the screws. So, just take this off, the door comes right off. Now we see the inside of the computer. As you look, you know this is the motherboard the thing that's pretty much, you know the playing field of the computer. And everything is on it, you'll have your processor, usually it's a big fan or heat sink as they call it, is on it, and then you'll have cards attached to the motherboard. What you're going to usually find right next to the processor is the RAM modules or the RAM slots, and usually there's about anywhere from two to four slots on your computer. And, you're going to want to find how many slots you have available, and you can see, I've got two RAM sticks in here already, and I have an option for a third one, again it's a good idea to go to your manufacturer's website to check out how many slots are available because sometimes if you have a certain speed of RAM it might only work in two slots instead of all three, so, I've got two fast sticks of RAM in there but this motherboard only supports those speeds in just two slots. So I couldn't put another RAM module in there if I wanted to. So it's a really good idea to go to the website and check it out, and I'll also find out what kind of RAM your computer takes, and that's it for trying to find out how many RAM slots your computer has."