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Hey, what's up? I'm Chris. Welcome to HP Workbench. So, you want to add more memory to your
HP or Compaq PC.
Well I'm going to show you how to figure out how much memory you have now, and how much more
you can add. Now as always this is part of our video series on selecting and
installing PC memory.
If you get caught up on the basics of memory or how to actually install it,
check out our other videos. Okay, so today we're going to upgrade our
HP Pavillion Media Center PC from two gigs to four gigs,
but we want to make sure this savage beast can handle four gigs.
I'm pretty sure it can but we want to double check.
Not only that, we want to make sure and see what type of memory it uses so
that way when we go out, we buy the right stuff. Now all of our answers are going to be
found
on hp.com,
but before we go there we need to figure out three things. We need to know how
much RAM we've got in there, what our operating system is,
and our model number.
So follow me and I'll show you how to get that.
Were going to go ahead and click on the Start button,
and then we're going to right-click
Computer,
and head down to Properties.
So as you can see,
our model number is m8040n,
and our operating system is Windows Vista Ultimate, and we've got the
32-bit operating system,
and look at that. We've got two gigs of RAM,
So we're good to go. So I'm just going to minimize this
just in case we need it later,
and we're going to head to hp.com.
Now we're going to go to two places to find all of our answers. So the first thing you're going
to do is going to enter the model number which, in our case, is Pavillion m8040n,
and the word "specifications" into the search box, then hit enter.
So when this page comes up,
we're gonna go ahead and click
on the specifications link with our model number. It's right here at the top.
We're going to scroll down
to the motherboard memory section.
So the good news is
our version, our 32-bit operating system, can handle four gigs. So we're
good to go.
On a side note, if you've got a 64-bit version,
you can take eight gigs so make the adjustment for whatever you got.
So now what we're going to do
is we're going to go ahead and copy the motherboard name. Make sure you copy the
HP motherboard name.
Copy that, select it, right-click and copy.
And we're gonna go ahead and go back
to the first page we were on,
the HP home page. I'll go back one more.
We're going to delete our previous search.
we're going to enter the HP motherboard name,
and we're gonna go ahead
and hit enter now,
and now we're going to head to our motherboard specs page.
It's going to tell us some more stuff we need to know.
So once you're there, scroll on down again to the memory section. Now this is going to tell us
tons of stuff we need to know.
Okay, so we know that it's going to be able to support up to four gigs on our
32-bit PC,
which is awesome, so we're good there.
Now up here at the top, it says that it supports dual-channel mode so we're
going to want to take advantage of that
and install in pairs. Now right below that it lets us know that we've got
four slots in there
so this way we can actually use to two 2 gig modules if we want, so we can go
either way. We can do four 1 gig modules or two 2 gig modules.
Now I recommend do whatever one you can get the best price on.
You know, put some extra money in your pocket.
Alright, you got everything you need to know. Now all you need to do
is make your list
and you're ready to go shopping.
As always, I'm Chris. Thanks for stopping by HP Workbench. If you have any
questions at all visit us at hp.com/support/consumer-forum
See you next time.