How do you see how much RAM is in your computer? You can easily check the details of RAM in Windows 10 using the Task Manager. The task manager performance tab shows a majority of memory details including the total amount of RAM, how much is in use, committed/cached and paged/non-paged amount of RAM, RAM speed and frequency, form factor, hardware reserved and even how many slots are being used.

• RAM slot, socket, or a memory slot is a gap on your computer’s motherboard where you can insert your RAM. Depending on the motherboard type, there might be up to four memory sockets. If you have a high-tier motherboard, you can even have more. There are three most common types of RAM.
• .We do not restrict Player Slots, World Size, or Plugins/Mods. The chart above is only what we recommend. How to upgrade/downgrade RAM. Towards the top of the site, click the billing area and log in. In the top menu select services and click on the server you would like to upgrade. To the left of the page, click on Upgrade/Downgrade.

If you’ve ever taken a look at a product page for sticks of RAM, or at the specifications for a CPU or motherboard, you’ve probably seen “memory channels” mentioned.

For many beginners, this sparks questions like, “What’s the deal? Does dual-channel mean I can only use two sticks? What do multiple channels do that one channel doesn’t? Can I use quad-channel RAM on a dual-channel motherboard?”

The answers to those questions and more can be found below, so read on!

RAM Channels: The What

Simply put, memory channels are the links between your RAM and your CPU through which data moves between the two. The RAM is the computer’s short-term memory, and the CPU is the main processor that does stuff with the information in the memory; the RAM channels are how that information moves back and forth.

To be clear, these memory channels are actual wires that exist on/in the motherboard. Though RAM kits may call their arrangements “channels,” the actual number of channels and the number of RAM sticks are independent of each other; any mention of channel count on a RAM kit’s product/specification page is just an informal, technically-incorrect way of referring to how many sticks of RAM there are in the kit. In addition, the number of RAM slots on a motherboard is independent of the number of memory channels. A channel needs only one stick to be used, and any more than that doesn’t necessarily stop things from working.

Most modern motherboards have two to four memory channels. On the AMD side, every AM4 socket motherboard has two memory channels, and every TR4 socket motherboard has four channels. On Intel’s side, every LGA 1151 motherboard has two memory channels, and every LGA 2066 motherboard has four memory channels. This means that, on our main chart, every configuration up to and including the “Enthusiast” tier has two memory channels. The “Extremist” and “Monstrous” tiers are the only rows which have four memory channels.

In addition, CPUs also support a certain maximum amount of memory channels. You don’t really need to worry about this, as every CPU will handle the amount of memory channels available on their supporting motherboards. There are only two notable exceptions: Intel’s i5-7640X and i7-7740X, which are both LGA 2066 CPUs, and very odd purchases anyway.

RAM Channels: The How

To explain what multiple channels do, let’s try an analogy.

Imagine a manufacturer of products:

Let’s say this manufacturer (your CPU), with potentially many factories (cores) in need of materials, makes orders for materials from only one supplier (memory channel). Even if the supplier has a whole lot of materials (capacity / stored data), and may run multiple warehouses (RAM sticks) of their own, it has a limited capacity for making shipments, and so can’t handle multiple shipments to the manufacturer at once. There may be multiple shipments ready to go, but they can’t actually start shipping until the current shipment is done.

A single-channel supplier warehouse attempting to serve a quad-factory manufacturer with one truck

The problem is, this manufacturer can often use materials faster than their supplier can ship them, and the delay from waiting on the supplier’s logistics system for consecutive orders can slow things down. Especially when this manufacturer’s factories are being heavily loaded with orders of their own from vendors and customers (your other components) while relying on materials orders, the supplier can pose a problem.

So, the manufacturer contracts with a second supplier in addition to the first. Now, the manufacturer does something efficient: They alternate orders between the two suppliers. This way, the manufacturer can have two simultaneous shipments coming their way, and they suddenly find that waiting on consecutive orders to be shipped is now significantly less of an issue, since their effective capacity for getting shipments has been doubled. This same idea can extend even further across more suppliers.

Really, how much the number of suppliers the manufacturer uses actually matters all depends on: how quickly materials are being used, how many factories they have (since each might come in need of materials at any given moment), how busy the manufacturer or specific factories are, and how quickly the suppliers themselves can send shipments to the manufacturer. Most of the time, this isn’t a big deal, but when things line up well or poorly, the number of suppliers (i.e. memory channels) can make a notable difference.

DDR5: Breaking the Status Quo?

If you’ve been keeping up-to-date on DDR5 memory, you may have seen mention of DDR5 RAM sticks (yes, each stick itself) having two memory channels. And what they’re saying is true, from a certain point-of-view. From my understanding, these “channels” aren’t like the memory channels described above, but still apply a similar (though not quite the same) concept on the stick-by-stick level.

Micron, one of the only three manufacturers of memory chips, describes this development as “essentially turning an 8-channel system as we know it today into a 16-channel system.” So what is going on here?

From what I can tell, it seems that each stick can work with two separate bunches of data, though it can’t be moving data from both bunches across the actual (physical, on-the-motherboard) channels at the same time. For example, a stick could be receiving data on one half, and be preparing to send data on the other half in the meantime. This is still a significant improvement in design over previous iterations of RAM like DDR4, though not quite as dramatic as it sounds at first. Reality is often disappointing; we’ll just have to wait and see if this turns out to actually be the case.

Conclusion

Let’s make one thing clear: to use multiple channels, you need multiple RAM sticks. Those RAM sticks should be installed so that you have at least one stick in each channel. The best thing you can do here is place your RAM sticks according to what your motherboard manual says. Though the slots are usually color-coded, this isn’t always the case, so check that motherboard manual.

For many country versions of our main chart, the linked 8GB options (and every 4GB option) are single sticks; so, without another stick of RAM, only one memory channel will be used. This is not the case everywhere, though, and all 8GB kits in the US version of the chart have two sticks for dual-channel. The 16GB options are dominated by two-stick 16GB kits, though some countries still have one-stick options linked. However, it’s up to you to choose how many sticks will work best for your system and your program tasks—there’s no need to get the exact kits we link.

Summary :

How do I know what hard drive is in my computer? How do I know if I have a SSD or HDD in my Windows 10 PC? This post provides 5 ways to let you find out the hard drive type and specs in your Windows 10 PC or laptop. If you need to recover lost data from computer or mobiles, manage hard drive partitions, backup and restore system, you can turn to MiniTool software.

Hard drive is an important component of a computer that stores all the data processed by CPU. Generally the traditional HDD is cheaper than SSD, but the newer SSD is faster than HDD.

What hard drive do I have Windows 10? Do I have an SSD or HDD in my Windows 10 computer? This post provides 5 ways to help you check what kind of hard drive you have and how to check hard drive specs in your PC/laptop.

How much RAM do I have in Windows 10 or Mac computer? Tutorial for how to check RAM Windows 10, how to check how much RAM is being used or available.

1. Check What Hard Drive You Have with System Information

You can use Windows System Information to easily find out what hard drive you have in your computer. The System Information tool is built in in Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP, and it lets you check the hard drive detailed specs.

Step 1. You can press Windows + R to open Windows Run dialog, type msinfo32 in Run box, and hit Enter to open System Information window. Alternatively, you can click Start menu, type system information, and click System Information to open this tool.

Step 2. You can then click Components -> Storage. Under Storage category, you can click Disks, and it will list the detailed information of your computer hard disk drive. You can check the hard drive type to find out if it’s HDD or SSD, and find out the hard drive manufacturer, model, partitions, the size of each partition, and more. (Related: Partition External Hard Drive)

You can also click Drives to check the detailed information of each partition on your hard drive, incl. partition size, available free space, partition file system, hard drive letter, etc. (Related: NTFS vs FAT File System)

What CPU do I have? This posts offer guides for how to check CPU/processor type in 5 ways, and how to check CPU speed, usage, temperature in Windows 10 or Mac.

2. Check If You Have an SSD or HDD Windows 10 with Disk Defragmenter

If you are wondering “do I have a HHD or SSD”, you can also use Disk Defragmenter to find out “what hard drive do I have” in Windows 10/8/7.

Step 1. You can press Windows + R, type dfrgui, and press Enter to open Disk Defragmenter tool.

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Step 2. In Media type column, you can find out if your hard drive is solid state drive or hard disk drive.

How To Check How Many Ram Slots Do I Have

3. Find out What Hard Drive You Have in Windows 10 with PowerShell

Step 1. You can also press Windows + X, and choose Windows PowerShell (Admin) to open Windows PowerShell utility.

Step 2. Type the command Get-PhysicalDisk, and hit Enter. It will list all physical hard disks connected to your computer. You can check the hard drive type under MediaType column.

4. Check Hard Drive Windows 10 with Disk Management Software

Many third-party disk partition management utilities in market can detect the properties of your hard drive and help you manage your hard drive.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a top disk management tool letting you check the detailed information of your hard drive and partitions. You can also use it to create/resize/format/delete/wipe hard drive partitions, convert disk between MBR and GPT, NTFS and FAT, check hard drive health like checking file system errors and bad sectors, copy disk, migrate OS, and more.

You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to easily perform the hard drive/SSD speed test.

5. What Hard Drive Do I Have - Remove the Hard Drive to Find Out

Aside from the two methods above, you may also unscrew and open the case of your computer, and remove the hard disk drive to check the hard drive specs incl. hard drive RPM, capacity, model, etc.

How to check PC specs Windows 10? This post provides 5 ways with step-by-step guides to help you find full computer specs in Windows 10 PC/laptop.

Bottom Line

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What hard drive do I have? You can find it out with one of the 5 methods above. Some of them let you check the detailed information of your Windows 10/8/7 PC/laptop hard drive.