Ah don't let it scare you too much. If your important data is backed up - there is nothing you can break at that point you can't fix. Life is about exploration :) upgrading should be exciting and fun. And advice from friends is always a good idea. Ram is very easy to upgrade, hard drives are a bit harder as you need to copy the data over.

I was thinking the same. So i got to buy the dell brand

I'm hoping to replace it with water cooling over the next week or two :)

The downside is I do find it gets too warm, and I strongly recommend upgrading the fan.

Thank you! You can do them all at once. If you have any problems turning the computer on after, then I try them one at a time :)

@@LloydSummers Ok thanks. I was wondering cause it’s an older system.

Great question - I originally went with the i9-9900, which supports 4x32GB of RAM (yes two sticks would work great)

Mine is Dell XPS 8930 i7-8700 so it's older tech@@LloydSummers

The best way is the manufacturer will have specification sheets - they are determined primarily by the motherboard. In this case Dell reuses Asus motherboards and brands them as their own (I believe) so it is a tad harder to get the information on them If you aren't sure though, just copy the type of RAM the computer comes with!

@@LloydSummers Kewl, thank you.

The ssd + hdd Because it gives you more storage.

It does! I just did another series of upgrades on it and cleaned out the fans, it’s holding up great, but I wouldn’t overclock it with the stock fan. I was super surprised to see they didn’t use a higher grade fan as I have an i9 in it,..

@@LloydSummers I hate to ask too many questions but I'm kinda new to building pcs. I got some good ram for a really good deal, but its actually clocked at 3200. I was hoping I could just stuff them all together to get 24 gigs total. Will I have to somehow down clock my ram if I want to do this ?

@@noobsaibot8199 it *may* work, it depends on the motherboard. It should downclock to the slowest ram chip you have. But today, anything above 2666, maaaay not work in a motherboard. But if it boots up & logs into windows, you should be good. RAM usually either works or doesn’t work. It sometimes fails intermittently but it’s rare

Extra ram is definitely helpful with audio! Especially for really deep multi track stuff as it needs to hold high quality recordings in ram. The quantity and order of the ram is completely customizable, it’s more the total combined that matters (and their matching of types for speed). You should share some of the music :). Truth be told, I have seen my i5s struggle a bit with complex VSTis, so it can get a bit overwhelmed. But if that happens just kill Firefox / chrome and all that and give it less to think about on complex recordings.

@@LloydSummers Hello 👋 Thank you. I've uploaded a few little weird pieces. I'm quite to to the audio interface. Using reaper and so far the only VSt I use is Valhalla. Hahah. I sometimes use my moxf6 keys but I use its on board voices and effects on it until I buy a controller only. The moxf6 too much for what I seem to need. I hope to utilize omnisphere soon. So a controller would be easier to use and I'm using my little camper as a studio. Hahaha. I'm having a blast and I truly enjoyed this video of yours. I watched it a couple of times. Awesome skills my friend.

Great question.., hmm this would be a good video topic too, so, bios patches can be beneficial. But, they usually aren’t. The bios really acts as a traffic controller - it checks some basic things and can modify some settings to the motherboard (including ram timing and stuff that can matter). But personally, I haven’t seen a bios update make any improvement in all my years except to allow for better hard drive compatibility (so you can use more types of hard drives down the road). It can improve USB speeds though for sure!!

That's interesting. If it turns on for 4 seconds, and back off, there is a problem. My best guess is it means it's either overheating, not enough power, or the ram is erroring during the initial startup.

Hard drives, if they fail, will still let the system start up and show an error. Most of the time bad ram will still let you startup and stay running. And overheating is usually only after running for a while. So my best guess would be the power supply isn't strong enough. But it is easier and quicker to remove the ram, insert only one, reboot, and see if the error occurs. Then switch them and try again. It should let you at least troubleshoot the ram sticks that way. But no-boot or intermittent boot problems are always difficult to identify

@@LloydSummers Ok. tanks so much. Bye bYe

Chances are, the RAM you have is already dual channel. It makes the RAM run faster (instead of a single 64bit channel, it has 2x64 but channels, that it can send and receive data on). You can usually mix and match single and dual channel ram though, just remember to keep them in sets of two! So if your mother board has two white slots, and two blue slots, you want to put your 2 existing memory sticks in one colour, and your 2 new sticks in the other colour. They operate in pairs, so that should prevent it from having any compatibility issues. That said, the best way to be safe is to get 2 more that are identical. When they mismatch in timing or in single/dual - the motherboard needs to think more to make things compatible. It’s a tiny slow down but worth mentioning if it can be avoided :)

@@LloydSummers Ok, Thanks for your help!

It depends a lot on the MHz and the XPS... The cheapest ram on eBay, for example, looks the same but only works in servers. And newer faster RAM (i e. The $300/stick type) might be too fast for the motherboard. But there will be a user manual for your specific XPS which will show what MHz are supported and the best slot to use if you only have one stick

@@LloydSummers Okay, thank you

That would hook into a graphics card and it comes from the power supply.

*Yes, you can have two matching graphics cards in the same pc.

If it’s a locked Intel CPU the only solution is to get matching RAM. Speed, timing, and voltage.

Great questions - Ram timing is one of those things that has a very small impact. I think it is overrated, but technically the computer has to match the RAM when the sequences are off - sort of like a caching. I haven’t tested it but I suspect it has no practical slow downs and is mostly a theoretical slowdown. I agree - the CPU side will slow the RAM down for you. The nice thing about having the faster sticks is if you do update the CPU down the road, it will just work faster. There is also a chance the CPU gets patched later and can support faster RAM. But the price difference can be quite big.

​@@LloydSummers Thanks for the opinion on the ram timings, I won't worry too much about that if I decide to get some more ram. Also I didn't think of that point of if I decide to upgrade to a new cpu I wouldn't need to upgrade the ram again if I already bought faster speed ram (assuming that's what you meant by update).

silver xps 8930 has been refered to as special edition with better cooling fan and i9-9900k that what is in mine though it was stripped and sold

Theoretically speaking, if it is random small apps running, 4x8GB as it gives 8 channels of data access. But if you use only a few large programs, the RAM will be read in sequence, so 2x16GB would be better. It would only be 4 channels but could read a full 16GB of data in a single attempt. I honestly would go 2x16, just so you have room to add 2 more down the road though... I’d love to see a benchmark testing this theory, hmm,m,,

Good question, Ram alternates in most motherboards. So you want identical ram in slot 1 & 3 (painted white) and another identical set in 2 & 4 (painted black). It is just a manufacturer recommendation - it doesn’t make as much of a difference as they suggest it does but it’s the guidelines for ram installs.

@@LloydSummers So, if its only one, you can put it anywhere you want? And if you put 2 of them, you place them on the same color ports for dual channel compatibility? In other words, make them work properly?

@@NicheXCC the only catch is that motherboards like to have only 1 or 2 sticks in a very specific spot. Usually they are the two white channels, or will be labelled. It will be in the user guide for the motherboard or PC. But in practice I haven't ever seen it make a difference if you ignore the recommendation

Good question, it sits at the bottom of the body, and in a kind of cubby area. It fits in very tight. I will try and remember to measure the existing PSU when I open one up next to do some hard drive upgrades

Lloyd Summers Hello I sent the pc to Best Buy and hopefully they will be able to install it. If not I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Larry Raigrodski yeah! Their geek squad is pretty good and usually reliable.

Lloyd Summers so I went to Best Buy they were able to install everything expect the optical drive.

Larry Raigrodski awesome, was the pricing decent? I feel like they have good support!

It's called a cleaning cloth. The computer is sitting on it so metal isn't banging against the table whenever I'm opening or moving it around on camera to spare people's ears. :)

@@LloydSummers Ufff... what a relief :):):)