The RAM Upgrade That Never Was

[Jason Dunn]

In our continuing quest to have a fast, stable server, a few days ago I ordered an upgrade from 2 GB to 4 GB. It's about $700 USD out of my pocket (ouch!) but that's better than the $1500 USD they (ev1servers.net) wanted to charge earlier this year. The things I do for you guys. ;-) If you'd like to help offset that cost, feel free to become <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php">subscriber</a> and get some free goodies while you're at it.<br /><br />Anyway, this morning they took down the server to upgrade the RAM (the concept of doing upgrades in non-prime time hours seems to have eluded them), and when the server came back up about 30 minutes later...we still have 2 GB of RAM. :evil: There was a cryptic message from the technician stating "We are unable to perform the ram upgrade successfully due to an inadequate amount of ram required". Keeping in mind that the first message from them was on the delay of the RAM upgrade because they didn't have it in stock. I sent a rather terse email asking for a real explanation, and it turns out that when they took the server down and opened it up, it had four sticks of 512 MB, and they were holding 2 x 1 GB sticks in their hands - they assumed it had 2 x 1 GB sticks in it already. So they sealed it up, booted it up, and we're back in business - with the same amount of RAM that we had before. :roll: Some days you just wish you had stayed in bed...

[cjhp]

Couldn't they replace the first two 512 sticks with the 2 1gb sticks and then you would be at 3 Gb instead of 2Gb. At least it would be somewhat of an improvement! Since the server was already down it would have made sense to me.

[Jason Dunn]

Couldn't they replace the first two 512 sticks with the 2 1gb sticks and then you would be at 3 Gb instead of 2Gb. At least it would be somewhat of an improvement! Since the server was already down it would have made sense to me.

It's a dual Xeon box, and I think it needs to have matched pairs of RAM - but I'm not sure. That's a good idea though. ;-)

[bjornkeizers]

...If you'd like to help offset that cost, feel free to buy a subscriber (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php) and get some free goodies while you're at it.


Buy a *subscriber*?? I'd be interested in that! A good maid is hard to find these days, so if any of you subscribers know your way around a feather duster (and look nice in a maid's outfit) I'll paypal Jason some funds right away :D

[huangzhinong]

Couldn't they replace the first two 512 sticks with the 2 1gb sticks and then you would be at 3 Gb instead of 2Gb. At least it would be somewhat of an improvement! Since the server was already down it would have made sense to me.

It's a dual Xeon box, and I think it needs to have matched pairs of RAM - but I'm not sure. That's a good idea though. ;-)

Replacing the bank 1 and 3 with the 1gb RAM, all done.
Matched RAM only require pair matching.

[OSUKid7]

Glad Thoughts Media, Inc. is doing well enough to be able to provide such a great server. :D I'll never regret that I became a subscriber. Now I should just decide if it's better to go with the lifetime subscription or keep paying yearly.

[Darius Wey]

Couldn't they replace the first two 512 sticks with the 2 1gb sticks and then you would be at 3 Gb instead of 2Gb. At least it would be somewhat of an improvement! Since the server was already down it would have made sense to me.

The other thing that needs to be considered is what the RAM limit of the mobo is. If the mobo cannot take anything beyond 2GB, then adding an extra 1GB won't do much.

I'm not sure which mobo we have though...