Buying DDR1 ram on ebay [ ddr1 ram problems ]

[sebantonioseb]

I'm building a pc with old motherboard that uses ddr1 ram, has 2 ram slots and is capable of using max 2gb.

Problem is i can't find the right 1gb ram sticks. The motherboard supports pc1600 and pc2100 memory and i can find only pc3200 1gb ram sticks. I don't think that faster ram would work properly. That's why im thinking of buying it on ebay.

Could faster memory work and is it safe to get the right memory from ebay?

 

[Dragos Manea]

Any faster memory you put it will downclock automatically and work at the speed of motherboard.

 

[mwryder55]

You have to be careful with memory from that age because some of the RAM was made with chips that may not be compatible with your motherboard's BIOS. A lot of the motherboards from that era would only work with 1 GB packages if they were set up as 64 MB x 8, not the high density chips of 128 MB x 4. You might want to look at the Wikipedia article on DDR SDRAM.
A lot of the higher speed memory probably uses the higher density chips. If your motherboard doesn't support these chips they may only report half the rated memory if they work at all.