G.Skill Ares Review

A few weeks ago I came to realize that I needed some more RAM. 4 GB just wasn't enough to play some Battlefield 3 at the end of the day. So here the easy solution would be to just purchase some extra RAM for my tower and stop complaining. Well the actual solution was a little different. My Thermaltake Frio cooler covered the two DIMMs closest to the processor. I needed to find some RAM that would just fit under it. That is where the new G. Skill Ares came in to play.

I saw these mentioned on a blog somewhere so I hopped onto Newegg and ordered an 8GB orange kit. Installing them was simple, just like any other RAM. I just had to remove one of the fans on the heat sync temporarily while I installed the RAM. Once installed I had about half a centimeter of clearance!

Here are some pictures of the great stuff!

Once installed I had just a narrow gap between the top of the modules and the bottom of the Thermaltake fan. 

 Below is a screen shot form CPU-Z.

 Ohh and this little sticker made the deal all so much better!

Overall this stiff is great and my computer has been running wonderfully. If you want a little more in depth review of this new series of RAM check out the review on Overclock3D!

Making a RAM Disk - Turning RAM into a Hard Drive!

I was browsing around the Internet, as I spend most of my time, and I discovered the idea of a RAM disk. A RAM disk a section of your computers RAM that, through software, is being accessed as if it were a disk drive. The benefit of this is the increase in speed RAM can provide over a hard drive.

To do this I needed some software and after a few quick Google searches I can across a program called RAMDisk from DataRam.com. Their free version of the program allows for up to 4GB of RAM to be assigned as a drive letter on your computer. Now currently in my computer I only have 4GB of RAM so this program would work for me just find.

The program was very easy to set up. After downloading and installing it I launched it and selected the size of the drive I wanted to create and then I selected why type of formatting I wanted. After that I created my RAM disk and was able to access it in Windows Explorer.

DiskRAM - Making a 1GB RAM Drive

1GB RAM Drive

The speeds of the drive were very impressive. I used a free program called CrystalDiskMark to speed test the sequential read and write speeds of the drive. I was getting speed results of around 2.4GB/s. Which is well over the average of 76MB/s I was getting with my SATA II hard drive.

SATA II Hard Drive Sequential Read/Write Speeds

RAMDisk Drive Sequential Read/Write Speeds

This software also has many neat features like saving the RAM drive to your hard drive when you turn off the computer and loading it back when you turn it on. This is some great software and I am happy to have such a fast RAM Drive! Now to get more RAM, XD.

How to find out what type of RAM you have in your computer!

My number one recommended place to find the type of RAM that your computer needs would be the original manual for your computer or motherboard. Now I understand that most of us probably have no clue where we last left our manuals. That is why today I am sharing with you this neat little program called System Information for Windows or SIW for short.

This program is a free download for non-commercial use. It will show you a lot of different useful information about your computer. It will also show you what type of RAM you have installed. Just scroll down to the Memory section in the left pane and it will tell you all of the information it can find about your memory.

System Information for Windows - Scan you computers hardware, memory, etc.

Download SIW System Information for Windows


Option Two

If for some reason the software does not work, it should, you can give this online scanner a try. Now I would highly recommended using the SIW software first but you may also want to give this site a try. It will scan your computer for the type of memory through a web browser.