Quick RAM question if anybody knows

[Taem]

Someone is selling some RAM on craigslist locally and I was thinking of getting it for a BYO comp for my kids. I'm going to get them an ASUS A8N motherboard which can take up to DDR 400 184-pin ram. What I have in my computer is 4 x 1GB SDRAM sticks of Corsiour PC 133. This guy on craigslist is selling 4GB Proliant Server Memory 4 x 1GB 133 Mhz ECC SDRAM. Is server memory different than regular memory? I'm short on time today, but a quick google search didn't find me any useful information on this.

[Kevin]

Someone is selling some RAM on craigslist locally and I was thinking of getting it for a BYO comp for my kids. I'm going to get them an ASUS A8N motherboard which can take up to DDR 400 184-pin ram. What I have in my computer is 4 x 1GB SDRAM sticks of Corsiour PC 133. This guy on craigslist is selling 4GB Proliant Server Memory 4 x 1GB 133 Mhz ECC SDRAM. Is server memory different than regular memory? I'm short on time today, but a quick google search didn't find me any useful information on this.

Yes it can be, and based on what you listed this is. The board you are putting it in needs be able to handle ECC (error correcting code) this is not something that most systems have.

[kandrathe]

Yes it can be, and based on what you listed this is. The board you are putting it in needs be able to handle ECC (error correcting code) this is not something that most systems have.

GG's right. I would be suspicious of the compatibility of used Proliant server memory. DDR400 includes a specification that clocks up to 200mhz, 5ns, and transfers bursts up to 3200MB/s. If your mobo takes DDR400, then it (and you) will be happiest with DDR400.

Crucial DDR400 184 1GB is $37 on Newegg...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820146545

[librarian]

Heiho,

SD RAM and DDR RAM are not compatible (neither electronically nor mechanically). Thus if you want to build a PC based on that Asus MB you'll _need_ DDR RAM. SD RAM was quite popular with servers way longer than it was on home/office PCs, which may give this guy the opportunity to sell his modules and still get some serious bucks out of it*. But not from you ;-) SD RAM is outdated technology, you shouldn't build a new system based on it.




* I wasn't interested in purchasing RAM for some time, but a check at some online hardware vendor indicates that SD RAM 133 is about 4x the price of DDR RAM 400, and modules beyond 512MB are rare.

[Taem]

SD RAM and DDR RAM are not compatible

Well, what does this mean? So DDR SDRAM is different then SD RAM?

Memory
Supported RAM Technology DDR SDRAM
RAM Installed ( Max ) 0 MB / 4 GB (max)
Supported RAM Speed PC2100, PC2700, PC3200

And looks like I have egg on my face. After checking the specs on my computer, I have for DIMM slots filled with Kingston K 1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (3.0-3-3-8 @ 200 MHz) (2.5-3-3-7 @ 166 MHz) (2.0-2-2-6 @ 133 MHz)

[librarian]

Heiho,

DDR RAM is a subspecies of SD RAM, but if you see SD RAM stated without DDR it usually refers to the outdated SDR SD RAM standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDRAM

SDR SDRAM

Originally simply known as "SDRAM", Single Data Rate SDRAM can accept one command and transfer one word of data per clock cycle. Typical clock frequencies are 100 and 133 MHz. Chips are made with a variety of data bus sizes (most commonly 4, 8 or 16 bits), but chips are generally assembled into 168-pin DIMMs that read or write 64 (non-ECC) or 72 (ECC) bits at a time.

...

DDR SDRAM

While the access latency of DRAM is fundamentally limited by the DRAM array, DRAM has very high potential bandwidth because each internal read is actually a row of many thousands of bits. To make more of this bandwidth available to users, a Double Data Rate interface was developed. This uses the same commands, accepted once per cycle, but reads or writes two words of data per clock cycle. Some minor changes to the SDR interface timing were made in hindsight, and the supply voltage was reduced from 3.3 to 2.5 V. As a result, DDR SDRAM is not backwards compatible with SDR SDRAM.

DDR SDRAM (sometimes called "DDR1" for greater clarity) doubles the minimum read or write unit; every access refers to at least two consecutive words.