Crucial Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why won’t my new RAM stick fit in my computer?

Posted on January 17, 2023

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from David: I recently bought a refurbished Dell desktop computer that came with 8GB of RAM installed. I want to double that to 16GB.

I ran the “Crucial System Scanner” you mentioned in this post and it said the machine can use up to 64GB of DDR4-2133 RAM.

I found an 8GB DDR4-2133 RAM stick on Ebay for less than half of what Crucial is selling them for so I bought it. I received the new RAM just 3 days after I ordered it but it won’t fit into one of the empty RAM sockets on the computer.

Do you think the problem is an error in the info I got from the System Scanner? [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is my computer not working with the new RAM I bought?

Posted on December 5, 2017

Question from Eric H.: I have an older ASUS Essentio CM1630 desktop computer that came with 2GB of RAM.

I scanned the system with Speccy and found out it currently has a single 2GB/DDR3 RAM stick in it.

I want to upgrade the RAM so I bought an 8GB/DDR3 RAM stick and installed it so I can have 10GB total, but I ran into a problem.

The computer won’t boot with both RAM sticks installed. It also won’t boot with just the 8GB stick installed. However, it boots just fine with just the original 2GB stick installed.

What could be the problem? I know this computer is supposed to support up to 16GB of RAM total.

I’m thinking I might have bought a bad RAM stick but I wanted to check with you first in case there’s a BIOS setting or a jumper that needs to be changed.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]