Need to update RAM on one of your computing devices for example laptop? How will you check RAM type on your different devices? We will get to it shortly. First, bit intro – RAM as we all know (hopefully) is RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY. This exists on all of our computing devices including laptops, tablets, mobile devices, smartwatches and more.
RAM is also commonly known as the main memory or cache memory of a system. DDR increments (DDR2, DDR3, DDR4) are commonly used RAM types within our computers. Keeping in mind, there are types of RAM which exist – STATIC and DYNAMIC. STATIC or SRAM is faster because of lower access time. On the contrary DYNAMIC or DRAM is slower because of higher access time.
Let’s cut out the technical details and get to the core. When buying or using a system, we always tend to go for a higher RAM size depending on our system usage. For example; if you are going to play games or render videos – you will need more processing RAM. If your usage is just going to be checking emails, typing up some documents, browsing the internet and watching YouTube – you will be OK with a normal computing RAM.
Already have a machine (clearly) – let’s dig down on how to quickly assess RAM type without dismantling the machine.
Check RAM Type on Windows Machine
OPTION 1
You can navigation to Windows Administrative Tools and run Windows Memory Diagnostic. This will reboot the system and run memory diagnostic – giving you further details about the RAM health as well as details. This is time consuming and not ideal if you want to do a quick check.
OPTION 2
Open Task Manager and it might show you the memory at top – on the Performance Tab (this doesn’t work well for all machines)
OPTION 3
Open Command Prompt (run as administrator) and type the following command to detect the memory type (hit enter)wmic memorychip get devicelocator, memorytype
If memorytype = 24 – DDR3, 21 = DDR2, 20 = DDR, and if its 0 = unknown.
OPTION 4
Open Windows PowerShell and type the following command to check RAM typeGet-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_PhysicalMemory | Format-Table Capacity, Manufacturer, MemoryType, FormFactor, Name, Configuredclockspeed, Speed, Devicelocator, Serialnumber -AutoSize
This will output a lot of information related to RAM. The one we are interested in – is MemoryType. In the above image – MemoryType is listed as 0. (i.e. unknown)
OPTION 5
To check RAM type, you can download free tool called Speccy.https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy.
Simply install and open. Navigate to RAM. And open the Slot Accordion. It will show you the details (example below: DDR4-2400 (1200 MHz)
Leave a comment and let us know which option worked for you.
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