Testing RAMs

How do I go about checking my friend's RAM, he wants me to know if its broken or not. I currently have 512MBx2 Crucial DDR 500 RAM on my ASUS A8N mobo and my friend's RAM is DDR 400. Should I just take out the two RAM I have and plug my friend's in or just add his two RAMs on the missing DIMM.

If you add his ram into current empty memory slot with you ram, you would be ruin.

This is hard as it would cause your system become unstable. You have to adjust your current ram timing to Auto for everything as your memory is different than his or else yuo will not be able to boot if you plug his ram in directly.

So my suggestion is to use his setup to test his ram rather than making you do his as you already configured the best setting for your ram already. Why can't he check them on his computer? Load memtest86 into a floppy and test it during boot up.

Yep! Use Memtest for this task, but don't rip up your rig to do it unless his is totally dead.

You should also test each stick seperately, then try them together. There's cases where the SPD is set wrong, causing major problems when you try and run dual sticks.

Make sure you clear the CMOS on your board and manually change the timings and voltage between different types/brands of memory. SPD timings can remain in the bios and can really mess with later sets of ram if not cleared