Question

I have a Shuttle SG32G2 PC that I'm using as a small home server. It has two 240-pin DDR2 RAM slots, and officially supports 2GB per slot, for a maximum of 4GB of RAM, which I already have installed. I'd like to upgrade it to 8GB, using two 4GB sticks, however I've never tried installing more RAM than the motherboard officially supported, so I don't know if I'd be wasting my time or not.

Has anyone tried installing more than their motherboard's supported amount of RAM, and if so, what was your experience? Did it work? Did it render your PC unstable or unbootable? Did you run into issues that you were able to work around?

And for bonus points, if it won't work, why won't it work?

Answer 1

I have done it before and it has worked fine, however I noticed that the manual stated 2GB's, however the chipset specification said 4GB.

I think that generally speaking, it should work if you check the specification of the chipset. If the chipset doesn't support it, it is unlikely to work.

As for why - the reason probably is the computer just doesn't understand how to use it.

Looking at the Intel G31 information page (What your motherboard has) It states:

Dual-Channel DDR2 Memory Support

Delivers up to 12.8GB/s (DDR2 800 dual 6.4GB/s) of bandwidth and 4GB memory addressability for faster system responsiveness and support of 64-bit computing.

Based on this, I do not think it will work.

Answer 2

Take the confusion out of the issue. What does Crucial or Kingston say about the memory capacity of the computer?

The manufacturers manual is a snapshot in time, it only reflects what the manufacturer tested, when the manual was being written. They are rarely updated, unless a new version of the computer / motherboard / etc comes out.

The Memory dealers are much more interested in maximizing their sales, so they check systems more often, and with newer memory modules....

According to Crucial, the system only supports up to 4Gb of memory... http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=SG31G2&pl=Shuttle&cat=RAM

Kingston concurs:

Standard Memory: 0 MB (Removable)

Maximum Memory: 4 GB

Expansion: 2 Sockets

CPU & ChipSet: Intel Core 2 Quad Intel G31 Intel Core 2 Duo Intel G31 Intel Celeron D Intel G31

Bus Architecture: PCI; PCI Express; SSD - SATA 2.5-inch

Mfgr's System P/N's: N/A

Comments MODULES MUST BE ORDERED AND INSTALLED IN PAIRS for Dual Channel mode. Kingston offers "K2" Kit part numbers for Dual Channel mode.

If 4GB is installed, the recognized memory may be reduced to 3.5GB or less (depending on system configuration and memory allocation).

Answer 3

I agree with Wil, it's not going to happen on a G31. Whilst some maximum-memory limitations can be beatable with BIOS upgrades and newer, more dense memory, the 4GB limit in particular is a hard one, because as soon as you go above it you need more than 32 bits to address all the physical memory.

Answer 4

I agree with Wil and bobince and Benjamin Schollnick, you can't add more RAM than the motherboard can address.

I do have a suggestion: if you would like to spend money to speed up your system and your RAM is maxed out, a solid-state hard drive for $200 and up (for the good quality Intel drives) can be significantly faster than spinning-disk setups. And they use memory, so you could argue it's a memory upgrade if not RAM. Our host Jeff Atwood thinks they're great: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001304.html