Acer Aspire Z3731 memory woes...

Can 4gb RAM chips with 240 pin contacts be installed instead of 2gb chips if the first slot in each bank receives the chip? Memory for this unit made in 2010 has been impossible to find. Kensington, the orginal supplier discontinued the chips it has in 2011. I've tried three times with three different sources to obtain compatible chips that meet the standard published for this system. Kensington told me it was: Their part #KAC-VR313/2G. Their standard spec was: Standard 256M X 64 Non-ECC 1333MHz 240-pin Unbuffered DIMM (DDR3, 1.5V, CL9, FBGA, Gold, but nothing offered via standard "web lookup" efforts shipped to me so far has worked! If I knew I could scrap the orginal working chips and install 8gb of slightly different chips the system would accept, I would try it. I don't know what FBGA means, but the rep from Kensington commented that the orignal chips were "too expensive."

I would use surplus RAM if I could find it...

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philetus

No.

ZundapMan

I was afraid that was the answer. Later Acers, like our TC-605 with 16gb address space will do things like that, I think.

Snuffy

Several very good methods to see if you can find MEMORY. 1st i recommend you search Crucial. they also have a scanner you can download and let it scan your system it then will tell you what MEMORY will work in your system. and they have a 100% Guarantee that what they sell will work or return NO issue. and your system does support 2x4 gb or 8gb ram.

philetus

Yes, it supports 8GB. It has 2 banks of 2 slots. The most each slot will support is 2GB.

The motherboard is Micro ATX. You could probably put a new MB, CPU, DDR3-1600 memory, and a 300 watt power supply in it for under $200.

Snuffy

sheet id downloaded showd 2 slots not 4. so guess i DL the wrong paper

Baravykas

Sorry for reviving an old thread but I have exatly the same issue. Have you managed to upgrade your system? Have you tried upgrading the CPU? Thanks

ZundapMan

I had "given up" on upgrading this old trusty piece of hardware until I had a bout of upgrade insanity on Windows 10 which I now have "running and current" on this 2010 manufactured unit. It was apparently a very limited production run. I had to complain to Acer International when I tried to do a warranty registration on it because their webmaster had not entered the model in the drop down list of models! It took three days of update hell for the original "build" Windows 7 (X64) Microsoft operating system to stop applying updates. They were flying out the door of Microsoft at the time, so it had a huge update history that got corrupted index entries it was so long.

That said, it is still cranking along fairly smoothly with its' third 1 tb hard drive serving as the main workstation I use for administering a little homeowner domain attached to internet services at reasonably modern speeds. I just got a "hint" from another discussion that I need to try, just in case it has not already been attempted multiple times in the past. Since I have never been successful myself, nor have three separate little local "one man" computer shops that I've asked to help me, usually along with addressing some other issue. No one has ever been able to get this unity to run with all four chips to provide the full available address space to Windows.

The suggestion was to go back into the BIOS immediately after installing the new RAM and let it calculate or force it to calculate the required memory timing table for all four chips. Is there anyone lurking out there that knows technical details of the BIOS I'm running which was in the unit when I got it, and has not been updated as far as I know. None of the older web site BIOS downloads made available under this model appeared to be "clearly newer" and "compatible" with this unit.

Given the prices of RAM for this box, I'd be willing to buy a "matched set of four" guaranteed by the seller to be returned or dumped for a refund if I knew in advance how to force the BIOS to re-recognize its' current memory installation correctly. We got as far as getting 5 GB up and running once using a "junk box" 1 GB chip a tech had lying around, but we have never been able to upgrade to 8 GB the way the manufacturer planned and advertised.

For the record, a lot of chip suppliers sent me newer faster chips they claimed were compatible and none worked.

ZundapMan

Baravykas said:

Sorry for reviving an old thread but I have exatly the same issue. Have you managed to upgrade your system? Have you tried upgrading the CPU? Thanks

I'm still chugging along with the original 3.6 ghz 64bit processor, power supply, and RAM running the latest Windows 10 1803 version. I went through a "siege" with Microsoft Update back around the new year (Dec 2017/Jan 2018) that caused me to use a Microsoft produced refresh of the operating system that inadvertently wiped out most of my older installed software. The one good side effect was the thing boots faster, runs better, and takes updates without crapping out. I don't know how much good adding the RAM will do me now that I have an SSD based portable with 16gb of RAM and 8 virtual processors.

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