Adding Ram & 2 SATA Drives - What Should I know?

[dl77002]

I currently have 2 SATA drives (an 80 gb and a 140 gb) running on an AA8XE A-BIT Motherboard. I have a few video editing projects to finish in the near future, and my current 200gb of storage isn't nearly enough. I plan on adding 1 terabyte (2x 500gb drives) of memory, but don't want to go the external route as my desk is cluttered as it is. Unfortunately, I don't know much about adding internal drives.

Here are the two drives I currently have, 2 Seagate Barracudas 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache:

I plan on keeping these drives, as well as adding the 2 500gb drives. Since I've had these two drives for 2 years without a problem, I decided to go with the same company for the additional drives: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA

Please let me know if there's anything I'm overlooking in my choice of new drives.

Moving on, I see that my motherboard does in fact have two more SATA slots:

So, I need to plug each drive into each SATA slot using the SATA cable, no problem. But, I also need to plug a power cable into each drive; so where does this come from? I see in the first picture that the orange/red/black/yellow cables are the power cables, but those come straight out of the power supply and the cable ends on the second drive. Where do I plug the power in for the new drives?

My knowledge of adding RAM is even smaller than my knowledge of adding drives.

I currently have a gig of RAM (1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2x 512 MB)

Upon scanning my system at crucial.com, I see that the most RAM I can add is 4 gigs:

Additional Info:
USB Support: 2.x Compliant Error
Detection Support: Non-ECC only
Chipset: Intel 925XE
DDR2 SDRAM Frequencies: PC2-3200 and PC2-4200
Supported DRAM Types: DDR2 SDRAM only
Max Unbuffered DDR2 SDRAM: 4096MB
Module Types Supported: Unbuffered only
Max Component Density: 1024
Graphics Support: PCI Express x16
240-pin DDR2 DIMM Banking: 4 (2 banks of 2)
Although the memory can be installed one module at a time, the best performance comes from using matched pairs of modules.

The site states "your system requires that you install memory in pairs", so does this mean that if I have a gig in one pair of slots (2x 512mb), I must have a gig in the other pair of slots? Going by the numbers on the above image, would I be able to move memory 2 over into slot 1, and then add a 2gb kit (2x 1gb) into slots 3 and 4? What's the most amount of memory I can add without having to ditch the 2x 512mb cards I already have?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge regarding this and as a result my possibly confusing post.

 

[Michael]

You can get a 4pin molex to SATA power adapter from here, which will allow you to use a single 4pin molex connection (the white 4 pin plug you'll most likely see dangling around in side of your case unused, coming from your power supply) to power 2x SATA hard drives.

As for the RAM.. if you're looking at a 2GB kit (2x 1GB Sticks), I'd leave the RAM you have as it is, and put a 1GB stick in each of the open slots.


For the record, I shop at monoprice at least once a week.. they're more reliable than newegg, who I also shop with.

 

[Calibretto]

Do you have anymore SATA power connectors? If not then the adapters would work.

 

[andy faith]

yeh definately leave the memory where it is as they work in pairs and those are the slots they are supposed to work in so just add the !GB sticks in each of the currently spare slots. look in you're case for connectors such as the ones in the back of the hard drives see if there are any hanging loose, if not then you will need the above mentioned adaptor

 

[dl77002]

Thanks for the help guys. I'll add 2GB (2x 1GB sticks) and pick up a Molex adapter. Someone helped me on my research with the RAM so I know which ones to get now.