What happens when more RAM is installed than the motherboard supports?

Posted by DanDan on Super User See other posts from Super User or by DanDan
Published on 2009-08-26T17:55:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/15 20:51 UTC
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motherboard

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ram

I have a free RAM slot and some spare memory that will fit my computer. However the problem is my motherboard only supports 2GB and I have 2GB installed. What would happen if I plugged the spare memory in the RAM slot?

The following things spring to mind:

Nothing will happen
It will work, computer becomes faster
Computer becomes slower
Explosion
Undetermined (Any of the above)

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Update: Egged on by you zealous lot, I went ahead and stuck the extra memory in. It booted up! Unfortunately, the hunch of some has been proved correct. The memory is reported at the capped limit, rather then the actual available. A shame then! But thank you all for your suggestions, speculations and stories.

For your reference, I am using a Dell Insprion 6000 with 2gb installed, latest drivers. I attempted to add 512mb, with no success.

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