If your PC is newer, it probably has DDR4, or even DDR5.
Speccy and CPU-Z are tools that provide the same functionality as HWiNFO.
The UI will be different, but they present the same information.
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
Fire up HWiNFO and ensure to select “Summary-only” before you click “Start.”
We don’t need the sensor data right now.
HWiNFO displays everything you could ever want to know about your PC’s hardware.
Nick Lewis / How-To Geek
You’ll see something like “DDR3SDRAM,” “DDR4SDRAM,” or “DDR5SDRAM.”
The exact make of your RAM is important if you want toupgrade your PC’s RAM.
Related:DDR4 vs. DDR5 RAM: Is an Upgrade Worth It?
DDR4 will typically havespeedsanywhere between 1,000MHz and 2,000MHz.
DDR5 can be as high as 3,000MHz.
— don’t worry, your RAM isn’t defective.
RAM can be defined in terms of data rate ordoubledatarate (thus the acronym DDR).
That isn’t usually indicative of a problem either.
You just need toenable XMP or manually tweak some tweaks to get your RAM running at the advertised speeds.
Open HWiNFO, get your motherboard model, and then search on the internet for the manual.
Here’s an excerpt from an ASUS manual for the motherboard in the PC we used in this example.
Just double-check you buy it from a reputable retailer.
It also ensures you won’t have to worry about compatibility with your motherboard.
HWiNFO displays the number of RAM modules you have installed already.
If you could’t, reference HWiNFO and make a run at find as close of a match as possible.
Be sure not to install additional RAM that is slower than your current RAM.
How Much RAM Do You Need?
Only 2% of PCs surveyed had 64 gigabytes of RAM or more.
Nick Lewis / How-To Geek
Related:How Much RAM Does Your PC Need?
The overwhelming majority of consumer motherboards have only four RAM slots available.
How Does a PC Know What RAM Is Installed?
RAM identifies itself to your PC using Serial Presence Detect (SPD).
“SMBus is another standardthat defines one way for connected circuit boards to communicate with each other.
Here is what the SPD EEPROM looks like on an old stick of DDR3.
The larger black squares to either side are the RAM stick’s memory modules.
Related:What Kind of Memory Does My Computer Have Installed?
SPD data can be accessed directly by third-party programs likeSpeccy,HWiNFO, orCPU-Z.
Typically you won’t access it manually, however — that requires some pretty low-level programming.
However, you’ve got the option to get pretty close with PowerShell or Terminal.
You’ll get a complete list for every unique stick of RAM installed on your PC.
You might be looking at the capacity line and going, “Wait, what is this nonsense?”
— that is a reasonable reaction.
The capacity number looks wrong because it displays your RAM capacity in bytes, not gigabytes.
In this case, it works out to exactly 16 GB, which is what it should be.
Related:How Does RAM Speed and Timing Affect My PC’s Performance?
RAM that runs at 3600 MHz will be rated at 3600 MT/s.
