How to find out how much RAM your motherboard supports

 8

One of the reasons why PC sales have slumped, at least in my opinion, is the fact that many users do not see the need to upgrade their systems as often as before.

Back in the days, upgrading the processor from a 486 to a Pentium, or a Pentium to a Pentium II, was a huge deal, as were upgrades to system RAM (128 Megabyte for the win), or the video card.

Today, upgrades do not yield those high performance gains anymore. Sure, it is nice if you install a new video card to get even more frame rates out of games you play, or a faster processor to convert those media files faster, but all in all, the gains are not as noticeable as before unless you are updating a very old system.

The mobile sector is currently were PCs were a decade ago. Innovation is fast and advancements in processing power, battery life and other technologies justify a faster upgrade cycle. This too will eventually slow down.

Back to PCs.

RAM is not expensive anymore, with 4 Gigabytes of RAM available for about $40 right now, 8 Gigabytes for $80, and 16 Gigabytes starting at $150.

Performance will jump if you have less than 4 Gigabytes in your PC while you won't notice such a visual jump in performance if you already have 4 or 8 Gigabytes and want to upgrade them to even more RAM. It may be worth it nevertheless, for instance if you do a lot of real-time work on the PC, or work with huge files all the time.

Motherboard information

If you are like me, you do not know the model of the motherboard that has been built into your PC. I did assemble the PC myself, but it was some time ago and my memory is not the best anymore.

If you know the model, skip this step. If you do not know it, we need to find it out exactly as it will reveal to us what the motherboard supports.

Some motherboards may not support more RAM than is already installed, while others may limit the maximum memory or types that you can install, which you need to know before you head out and buy too much of it.

You can use Speccy or any other system information program to display the model of the Motherboard.

In my case -- the screenshot above -- it is a Gigabyte P55-USB3 motherboard.

Finding out how much RAM your PC supports

Now that we know the motherboard model, we can use it to look up information. What we need to know are the specs in regards to memory.

To be precise, how much RAM the motherboard supports and which types of RAM it supports.

You have two options for that:

1. Search for the model number

This is my preferred choice. I type the maker of the motherboard and the model of it in a search engine of choice. This should display the support page for that model on the manufacturer's website, where all relevant information about it are displayed.

To take my Gigabyte example: I landed on this page and had to click on Specification to find out about the memory specification of that motherboard.

1. 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory (Note 1)
2. Dual channel memory architecture
3. Support for DDR3 2200/1333/1066/800 MHz memory modules
4. Support for non-ECC memory modules
5. Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules

It told me that the board was supporting a maximum of 16 Gigabytes of DDR3 2200/1333/1066/800 MHz RAM.

2. Crucial

If you cannot find such a page for the motherboard that you own, you may want to try Crucial's suggestion tool instead.

Tip: You can also run the memory suggestion tool on your Windows PC

You need to enter the manufacturer, product line and model of the motherboard in a form on the main Crucial website to receive recommendations for memory, Solid State Drives and internal hard drives on the next page.

What may be interesting here -- besides the recommendation -- is the list of specs on the left. It displays the supported memory types, maximum memory and slots available to you, so that you end up with the same information that the manual search yielded.

You do not have to make a purchase here on the site though, as it makes sense to compare prices before you make any buying decision.

Display detailed information about the strength of SSL connections in Firefox

 0

Web browsers like Firefox display all kinds of information about SSL connections (when you are connecting to https websites).

Firefox indicates different types of secure connections in different colors and with different icons, and provides you with options to look up additional information about the connection with a couple of clicks.

Here you can view the certificate for example, and look up connection details that highlight the strength of the cipher among other things.

The information and handling of secure connections can be improved in several ways through the use of extensions. There is HTTPS Everywhere for example which enables you to force secure connections and can be configured to warn you when the encryption is weak.

Safe on the other hand visualizes secure connections by painting the window border in a different color to indicate this.

Calomel SSL Validation

The Calomel SSL Validation extension on the other hand grades secure connections in Firefox. Instead of just highlighting that you are connected securely, it computes a security score for the connection using the data that is exchanged to establish it.

The score is based on the following parameters: Perfect Forward Secrecy, Key Exchange, Bulk Cipher, Message Authentication Code and Certificate Hash Type and Key Length.

The extension adds an icon to Firefox's main toolbar that indicates the connection strength in color. You can click on the button to display detailed information that you see on the screenshot above.

The final security score is displayed here -- 84% in the example on the screenshot above -- and how each individual parameter that was rated attributed to the score.

It highlights in addition to that whether the certificate is verified, the class of it, the url host and common name.

While it is not possible to change the rating by yourself, you can change quite a few other related features in the preferences.

The security tab allows you to restrict certain cipher related features. You can force the browser to only allow a certain setup, for instance a minimum of 128-bit strenght with Perfect Forward Secrecy, to enable TLS v1.2 and 1.1 only, or to disable OSCP checks.

Again, if you want to find out more about these preferences, check out the author's homepage to do so. All options are explained there in detail.

The other tabs offer other interesting options that are not necessarily security related. Here is a short list of useful preferences that you find here:

1. Cache only to RAM, not to disk.
2. Disable DNS Prefetch, Geo Location Reporting and sending of referrer information.
3. Anonymize the user agent.
4. Disable animated gifs and ads.
5. Disable popup tooltips.
6. Enable spell-checking on all text boxes.
7. Disable the internal DNS cache.

Verdict

The Calomel SSL Validation extension provides you with a rating for a site's secure connection strength. Even if you do not agree (fully) with the rating scheme, it can prove useful as you can still look up information about the https connection with a single click of the mouse.

Plus, you get all the other preferences in addition to the extension's main feature. Heck, some may even install it just for moving the cache to RAM.

VSDC Free Screen Recorder lets you record any part of your desktop

VSDC Free Screen Recorder lets you record any part of your desktop

There are a couple of situations where you may want to record part of or all of your desktop on video. Maybe you want to create a tutorial for others and upload it to YouTube when it is done, or record a video or audio stream for safe keeping, or just a video for your new web service.

Whatever the reason may be, the search for a suitable program to make that recording may take longer than expected.

The core reason for this is that there are not that many free solutions available, and while you can spend a couple hundred Dollars on Camtasia Studio for one of the best recording solutions on the market, free software gets the job done as well.

A recent entry to the niche is VSDC Free Screen Recorder. As the name suggests, a free program for the Windows operating system that you can make use of to record any part of your desktop, and yes, that includes full screen.

VSDC Free Screen Recorder

The installation should not pose any issues -- there are not any third party offers included in the installer right now -- and the program interface itself is streamlined as well to make things as easy as possible.

In fact, you can start recording right away with a click on the button to get started. The program uses the recommended settings in this case.

If you want more control, or at least check what those default settings are, you may do so in the same interface.

The first screen lets you select the desired output video format. It can either be native PCM or a custom MPEG4 format by default. You can change that selection with a click on the Settings button here as it displays a menu where you can select any installed video or audio codec for use in the recording.

Note: The output directory change does not seem to work right now. While it is possible to select a different location, recordings will still be saved to the default save directory (in the My Video folder).

Now that you have configured the video and audio format, you may want to switch to the video and audio sources tab to configure those settings as well.

Here you can select the monitor you want to record -- handy if you use a multi-monitor system -- whether you want the cursor to be visible in the recording, and if you want to use overlays. These overlays highlight whenever you click the left or right mouse button, and also may add click sounds so that viewers know about mouse activities.

The audio settings let you pick one of the connected capture devices and audio input levels.

Once you hit the start recording button, you will notice that a transparent rectangle is displayed on the screen. It depicts the recording area, and you can use the mouse to change the frame to customize it  and make it fit perfectly.

The small icon in the middle of the rectangle is used to move the recording frame around in case you need to position it on the screen before you start the recording.

You can enable drawing options while you are recording. This lets you paint on the screen, e.g. display lines, text, or rectangles which can be useful to visualize certain screen elements.

Verdict

I ran into no recording troubles during tests. The output quality was great and the program delivered exactly what I wanted to achieve.

The recording directory bug is the only issue that I noticed, and it is likely being fixed soon by the developers so that you can pick a custom directory for the video recordings.

VSDC Free Screen Recorder is one of the easiest to use free desktop recording applications out there for Windows. Highly recommended.