Newbie upgrading ram.

[Braddyxe51]

Hi I am all new to computers well the inside of them anyway.

It has a Intel d845wn motherboard.
2x 256MB 133mhz
Wanting to upgrade to 3x 512 (for total 1.5GB) 133mhz 3.3v

Question is can I buy 3 single one or do I hav to buy them all as a matching set?
Im guessing these are the biggest I can use going bu the info from the site info below.

This is off site for M/board

3.3 V (only) 168-pin SDRAM DIMMs with gold-plated contacts
Unbuffered single-sided or double-sided DIMMs
Maximum total system memory*: 3 GB with 3 DIMMs (using 512 MB technology); minimum total system memory: 32 MB
133 MHz SDRAM DIMMs only
Serial Presence Detect (SPD)
Suspend to RAM support
ECC and non-ECC DIMMs
* The Intel Desktop Boards D845HV/D845WN have been designed to support DIMMs based on 512 Mbit technology for a maximum onboard capacity of up to 3 GB, but this technology has not been validated on this board.

Is there any differents brands. Which are better which are worse.
Do cheap ebay ones do the same as higher price retail store ones.
Your thoughts?

Also I put 2x 300 GB seagate H/D in this morning and they both worked straight away, but when I tried to change settings to get the usb to work as 2.0 higher speed the computer would not reboot when 1 of the H/D was connected.
1 is in Primary IDE with the 40GB drive, other was pluged to second IDE with the cd drive. So unpluged the second H/D and it rebooted.

Why would it keep rebooting before I had been into startup setting but not after. I dont think I changed anything.

Think you reading hope you can help.

Cheers Brad

[jlreich]

Don't buy cheap ram off of ebay. Old SDRAM could be very picky about compatibility and buying cheap stuff would be a real roll of the dice. Best bet is to go to one of the major ram manufacturers sites (Crucial (http://www.crucial.com/), Corsair (http://www.corsair.com/), Kingston (http://www.kingston.com/)) and use their ram finder for your system. If you don't find your board on the list use their scanning tool to scan your system and give you a list of compatible ram. Then either buy it from them directly or write down the model number and look for it at a reputable store either online or in a local store. Finding it somewhere other then the manufacturer directly is usually cheaper.

1 is in Primary IDE with the 40GB drive, other was pluged to second IDE with the cd drive. So unpluged the second H/D and it rebooted.
First it is best to have the hard drive on the master connector (the one on the end of the cable) if it is not already. Make sure all drives are jumpered (http://forums.techguy.org/attachments/155496d1251677239/hard-drive-jumper-.jpg) correctly. Set the one on the end connector as "master" and the one on the middle connector as "slave". Or set all drives as "cable select".

[Braddyxe51]

Thank you for reply.
I have the the h/drive hooked as you say. master at end and slave middle. They are on a 40 wire cable. Did have the 2nd slave on second IDE 80 wire cable with cd drive but that was messing with bootup so have taken it out

I will look at these makers for ram.
I do realise that the system is very old so not going to spend to much on it.
Just want it fast enough to move files around and not have it interfia with music playing and make it skip and stuff like that.

Cheers Brad