Tech Questions? Get the Answers: 5/3/2023

Q: What is computer RAM?

A: RAM or Random Access Memory is an essential component of any computer system. It serves the computer’s short-term memory. It acts like a buffet table of data between the kitchen and the customers. At a sit-down restaurant, you have to look through the menu to find what you want, then the order goes into the kitchen and you have to wait until your food is prepared and brought back to your table. At a buffet, you can see all your choices spread out in front of you, and you can pick and choose what you want and start eating without needing to wait on the kitchen for anything. As foods on the buffet table are used up or changed out, the kitchen can plan ahead for that and keep the buffet stocked with fresh food so the customers can continue to get their food as quickly as they can eat it.

RAM is a type of memory that is very fast, but is called volatile memory because it doesn’t hold the data if the power is turned off as a hard drive does, similar to how food will spoil on a buffet table overnight, but is fine in the kitchen refrigerator. The computer processor is the brain of the computer system, but it can’t remember anything. It can only do calculations. This is the customer in the buffet analogy. The programs are all stored on the hard drive (the kitchen in our analogy), but the hard drive can’t do anything with the data except save, hold, and retrieve it. Even though hard drives are continuously getting faster, and solid-state hard drives are even faster, they don’t even come close to how fast the processor can use the data. This causes a bottleneck because the hard drive can’t provide the data fast enough for the processor.

This is why the amount of RAM your computer has will affect how quickly it can run. The more RAM you have, the more data is accessible to your processor, and the less data will have to be transferred from the slow hard drive. With a larger buffet table, a restaurant can feed more people quicker than with a smaller buffet table.

With all this data transfer it is important that the size and speed of the RAM are compatible with what the motherboard (where the processor lives) can use. This allows the system to load larger portions of data to the RAM from the hard drive so the processor can quickly access any part of the program it needs. If you think you might benefit from more RAM in your computer contact your local computer professional to find out what options you have.

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