Adding RAM

[Dorsetmike]

I've recently bought a new PC as my previous one developed an intermittent fault. I've added the 2Tb Hard disk from the old machine to the new one making a total of 5Tb  and would like to add the 2x 8gb DDR3 RAM to the new one but there are only 2 slots which already have 2x 8gb, are there any expansion cards or other ways of doing this, I'm not desparate so don't want to discard all the available RAM and fit 2x16GB, just want to make use of what I have,

[zwilnik]

Generally speaking no as the memory slots are usually wired on a much faster bus connection to the CPU, so any added via expansion cards would be a lot slower (essentially it would be an SSD hard drive used as a ram disk).

Cheapest and simplest solution is probably to get the 2x 16gb sticks and sell off the 8gb ones.

[njee20]

Simple answer is no.

Edit: too slow!

16s are still pretty expensive, not sure I'd bother at all.

Have you got an SSD in there? That'll make far more difference to performance than two HDDs and some extra RAM. Unless you really need 5TB of storage?

[ntpntpntp]

5TB of storage - blimey that must take some backing up! Do you really need that much disc?

Long gone are the days of expansion cards full of RAM chips - I remember having one for my ancient 8086 PC back in the early 80s, it looked impressive but only took the system up to 640K I think!

[Dorsetmike]

240G SSD, AMD A10-7890K quad core plus integral 8 core GPU. 4.1GHz, Win 7Pro 64bit.

Just hoped there might be an easy way to use the 2x8Gb RAM from the old machine.

[ntpntpntp]

240G SSD, AMD A10-7890K quad core plus integral 8 core GPU. 4.1GHz, Win 7Pro 64bit.

... which all sounds very impressive and all you do is surf the net and write text in Notepad      

[Invicta Alec]

Mike,

There are not too many applications I can think of that would benefit from using more than 16gb memory!

The modern SSD hard drives are lightening fast compared to electro-mechanical drives so if your machine has an SSD and also a decent video card then you can't do a lot better. Sell off your spare memory!

Alec.

[Dorsetmike]

Not just surfing the net, I occasionally use Notepad, more usually Libre Office; Image, video & audio editing, no video card, the AMD A10 7890K includes an 8 core graphics processor as well as 4core CPU.

Storage - got many years of photos, also videos, originals and edits.  Plus have  virtual pipe organ software which has a lot of sample sets  (.wav files for every note of every stop on a number of organs and other instruments typically 2Gb for a medium sized organ). Also loads of MP3 music files, ranging from Baroque period clasical Big band swing, modern and trad Jazz and some pop up to about 1980, not much that I'd call music has ben written since 1980 ish. Quite a few Gb of Raiway oriented stuff too.

I back up to external drives.

[keithfre]

Plus have  virtual pipe organ software which has a lot of sample sets  (.wav files for every note of every stop on a number of organs and other instruments typically 2Gb for a medium sized organ).

Ah, similar situation to mine: I use Band in a Box, which generates backing tracks on the fly from wav files. Because it's so memory-intensive I doubled the RAM - at some expense - on the netbook, but didn't notice much if any improvement in performance. So probably not worth worrying about RAM.

[ntpntpntp]

Yeah video editing sure chews up disc space. Also my lad runs music workstation software etc. on the PC in our music room so lots of recording takes, VST instrument sample sets etc. 

We have a central network drive to host and serve music/videos/photos (handy for our music players and smart TVs) and I encourage everyone to back up their documents and stuff to it.  I then run a backup of that on a reasonably regular basis (ie. when I remember at the end of the month!) and store the backup off site.

My Goflex Home network drive has been great for a few years but is starting to misbehave because the clock battery has died. It's only a problem if the thing is powered off and on but I need to go in and sort out a replacement. It's not a "user serviceable" part and the device is long out of production but going by photos on the net I reckon it's just a stack of LR44 type button cells with a soldered retaining strap.  Just need to find a time when no-one's using it for half an hour or so and take the plunge!