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Just realized I've been installing RAM sticks backwards for 6 years
Was upgrading my old Dell Optiplex and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't boot - a guy at the local repair shop near Omaha pointed out the notch was facing the wrong way on both sticks. Has anyone else made a boneheaded PC building mistake that took forever to notice?
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beth_hunt27d ago
@susan_nguyen your buddy's GPU mistake is pretty common, I see it all the time. But actually, I think that notch thing is more forgiving than people make it out to be. Some boards and RAM sticks have such subtle keying that if you push hard enough, you can get it in wrong without breaking anything - especially with older DDR3 sticks. I've seen plenty of folks do that and their PCs just didn't boot, no permanent damage. Meanwhile, I had a buddy who used thermal paste on the pins of his CPU instead of the top - now that was a real disaster.
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