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Tech607

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 27, 2006
78
0
I have a dell dimension 4600 that I am upgrading for my friend. It says online to install the memory in pairs. It has 4 slots and only 2 are used, what will happen if I just install 1 512mb stick. It currently has 2 128mb sticks.
 
it won't work

your computer, at a guess (hard to know without actually having the specs), has two memory "banks," and those banks require two memory cards per bank. Because the memory bank works as a unit, if you install only one memory card in a bank that needs two to function, then that bank will not work. Whether this will cause a system crash or just a slowdown...hard to say. It's possible that the machine will return an error on startup and refuse to boot.
 
I have a dell dimension 4600 that I am upgrading for my friend. It says online to install the memory in pairs. It has 4 slots and only 2 are used, what will happen if I just install 1 512mb stick. It currently has 2 128mb sticks.

http://support.dell.com and find your user manual. That will have the exact answers for you.
 
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