Need some info on an Emachines ER1401-57

[arkan]

To make a long story short, a friend of mine bought an Emachines ER1401-57 to give to his uncle. It seemed like the perfect fit for him since all he does is surf the web, play cards online, and email a bit.

When he first got the system, the 2 GB of RAM it came with seemed like plenty since he wasn't doing anything demanding at all. But now, after months and months of updates to Windows, Windows 7 is now eating up all but about 250 MB of the installed 2 GB of ram. I'm aware Windows 7 will often use excess RAM for disk caching, but this isn't the culprit in this case as there doesn't seem to be enough free RAM for windows to even cache the drive, and it would be expected to release said RAM once another program needed it. He finally asked for help when Windows started giving him "out of RAM" errors.

So the gentleman is in need of a RAM upgrade for this machine, and I need to get some info before proceeding on it. It uses DDR3 so-dimms for RAM and has two ram slots. It uses an AMD Athlon II Neo Processor K325 as well. The processor is what has me asking questions, as I keep finding conflicting specs for it. Does this CPU make use of dual channel memory or single channel? I've seen conflicting specs concerning this. It really only matters because I have 1 spare so-dimm already that would get him up to 4 GB, but I need to know if his setup supports dual channel so I know if I should just get him a 2x2GB or possibly 2x4GB set. He's a fellow veteran on a fixed income so I'm trying to keep costs to a minimum while donating what I can to him for free.

 

[DarrenP]

I would just upgrade to a 2x2GB configuration.

 

[Soulcatcher668]

If you have the stick of ram sitting around... stick it in.
As far a I can tell it maxes out at 4 gigs anyways. Looks like a giant pain to do the upgrade though....

 

[arkan]

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to having to take it apart to do the upgrade, but the guy is offering to have BBQ that day to make the trip out there worth it. Hard to say no to farm fresh ribs and veggies to go with it. Thanks for the input guys.

 

[DarrenP]

Wait, are you talking about a laptop? I could just donate the RAM if you want...

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Its a desktop, but a super small one. It has 2 RAM slots, with a max capacity of 4GB total.

It takes 204-pin DDR3, so laptop memory.

 

[DarrenP]

Oh, well i was kinda thinking there... Yeah, how long would you be willing to wait for the RAM, i can donate to the cause i have crap-tons of Laptop RAM lying around. Even from my Macbook Pro that came with 2x2GB of RAM. I'll check if it will take 1600Mhz.

Edit: I checked what it can take. I have just the RAM. Guess what though! I'm not using it! I can donate to the cause in about a week in a half? Of course if you wanted?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Speed isn't a big deal, if its over the rated speed, it will simply clock the RAM down.

 

[DarrenP]

Well i have 1333Mhz RAM, i could even send you 2x4GB sticks if you wanted to try those too. Like 2 sets, 1 2x2GB set, and 1 2x4GB set.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

The 2x2GB will work, the 2x4GB won't.

 

[DarrenP]

Alrighty! If the OP wants it, i'll mail it to him when i get paid.

 

[arkan]

Alrighty! If the OP wants it, i'll mail it to him when i get paid.

I appreciate the offer very much but it won't be needed. One of the guys at work jumped at the chance to swap a 2x2 set for the 1 4 GB stick I had already so it worked out nicely. I can only hope someone is just as willing to step up and offer to help if you need something one day. And once again thank you for the offer.