Coloured RAM channels

OK Now have poured over the maintenance manual for the M51 - sorry typed M55 first up - and apart from how to install RAM it does not say what colour to use with what colour.

In the pic I have circled the slots numbering system the north bridge and CPU to give you some perspective of what I am seeing the locality of the RAM to the CPU etc .

Now common sense tells me that the BLACK slots are DIMM 1+2 and YELLOW the DIMM 3+4.

Now the original installer either put one stick in DIMM 1 and one in DIMM 3 and I suspect as everyone is saying that he was either colour blind, did it in a rush, didn't know what he / she was doing OR that is how they are meant to go.

I suppose there is only one way to find out and that is to put a stick in DIMMS 1+2 and see what happens. If the thing works ok then I shall have to redo the other machines I have done in the past as they are all 1 stick black and 1 stick yellow.

If what I am reading in Hardwaresecrets site is anything to go by the sticks will be out of whack with each other - except there is a comment on page five -http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-Dual-Triple-and-Quad-Channel-Memory-Architectures/133/5 - that is still making it a tad ambiguous. However the main article would account of the lack of speed mind you there is only 512MB per machine which really lets down what is quite a decent built machine as I mentioned before one I scored for my troubles has 4GB in it and flies.

have a read of this here it may help explain http://goo.gl/a012s

If the two RAM sticks are similar in specs, they go into the slots of the same color.

Dwarf said:

...Although many boards with 4 or more slots colour code them, there is no hard fast rule about this...

Quite true.

My old MSI Socket 939 board had colored slots and after I'd had it a month they sent a notice that even the manual had it wrong. The best thing is to look for the "Dual-Channel" notice during POST. If your board doesn't tell you that you can check it with something like CPUID. Just navigate to the "Memory" tab and make sure it says "Dual". :)