Is there any way to increase the amount of DIMM slots in a motherboard?

Question

I have a computer with 2GB of RAM, and will eventually change the whole motherboard, but for now I only need more memory. The problem is that the motherboard is DDR2 and only has two DIMM slots, used by two DDR2 1GB sticks.

Is there any way to use the same slots like a 2-to-1 adapter to insert more RAM, so I wouldn't have to throw away the old memory?

Could this be possible with some kind of PCI adapter? Better if it has DDR3 support so I could also use it when I buy a new motherboard.

Solution 1

Well, there's PCIe-based RAM storage devices but they aren't anywhere near affordable - getting a new system is cheaper. The other thing you're looking at (2-to-1 adapters) don't exist, and probably will not, ever.

The 'best' way in the short term would probably be to pop in a spare hard drive in a separate storage controller channel (on PATA), and set up a fairly large swap or pagefile on it.

Alternatively try to reduce memory use on non essential things.

Solution 2

No, it is not possible to do that

Solution 3

If all you need at the moment is more memory, just upgrade to 2x 2GB RAM modules. A (hypothetical) miracle device, as described in your question, would probably cost as much as just getting new RAM modules.

Or, bite the bullet and upgrade the motherboard now instead of drawing out the process.

Comments

[Akash]

the pcie based RAM storage you have linked to seems to be a secondary storage device..

[Thalys]

If its fast enough, you could probably use it for insanely fast swap (which is as good as ram). That's the closest thing to what you're talking about in terms of a pci/ram adaptor. The practical thing is more swap, IMO

[Ramhound]

A mechanical HDD is slower, even the fastest mechanical HDDS, would be slower then the slowest memory. So the only solution would a SSD HDD, and even then, you would be limited to the PCI-E bus. In other words there is no replacement for good old memory.

[Zequez]

I can't reduce more the memory usage, I disabled services down to 800mb idle Windows 7. The real problem is Chrome and Rubymine that both use a lot of RAM. I ended up trying with ReadyBoost and a memory stick to increase the read/write for small files and reduce the disk usage. I guess I'll wait a little more, is not that bad anyway :P