# Can a computer run without RAM? Does a full HDD make a computer slower?



## kalibcrone (Mar 3, 2011)

I noticed that at school the computers say they all have 1GB of RAM, intel dual cores, win7, and usually a crappy 70GB HDD that is almost completely full. these computers take like 5-8 minutes to turn on, load up win7, and log me in. my computer takes about 30 seconds to do all of that. they suck.

about the RAM, i looked inside a few of the computers.. and there was no RAM sticks at all, so does that mean it was a special built in stick of RAM or something? and what would happen if i took out all of my RAM out of my computer knowing it doesn't have any built in RAM into the MB? would it not work, or just work very slowly?

about the HDD, does having a full HDD mean the computer will be slower all together? or does it just depend on the speed of the HDD and CPU and stuff?


----------



## Old Rich (May 31, 2007)

A pc has to have RAM to boot . . what brand and Model are they? A full hard drive will slow a system down noticable


----------



## Proxyman (May 30, 2011)

No, a computer cannot run without RAM. I'd be interested in hearing about a computer that has the RAM hard-soldred to the motherboard. I've never seen a M/B that didn't have slots for RAM. The machine will refuse to boot without RAM. The BIOS will give error beeps (whatever code it is that indicates "no RAM") and that's all it will do. Take your RAM out and try it.

Yes, at some point how "full" the hard drive is will slow the machine down. You need a certain amount of freespace, or "slack" in order to give the machine room to work. I'd say anything over 80% full is bad.

Fragmented data is a more likely & significant cause of computer slowdowns, however. A very fragmented drive only 20% full will run slower than a defragmented drive that is 80% full.

I'd bet your school machines are slow because of all the protection softwares that have been over-installed on top of the OEM bloatware that no one has taken the time to remove. Is Norton or McAfee the AV software, in addition to 2 or 3 more? Are they restricting access to Myspace, Facebook, p2p filesharing, other objectionable sites & activities, etc...?

Software is a "load" on the system. The more software that is running, the slower it will run. The less software, the faster it will run. Hardware can be a bottle neck for certain and very specific tasks (Adobe Photoshop, Video Editting, graphic intensive games, etc...) but for basic browsing and email, a basic system like you describe should be good enough for most people. If these computers are slow, it's either because something is wrong, there is too much software running or both.


----------



## gogul74 (Jul 5, 2011)

the asus p5k3 black pearl edition mobo has no ram slots just 2 gb of integrated tea tree ram ddr3


----------



## Proxyman (May 30, 2011)

gogul74 said:


> the asus p5k3 black pearl edition mobo has no ram slots just 2 gb of integrated tea tree ram ddr3


I had to go through a few reviews before I found one I thought worth posting. It's off-topic a bit, but here's what a motherboard with no RAM slots looks like. Pretty wild.

ASUS P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition - HardwareZone.com


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

1GB of RAM w/ Windows 7 would be a big contributor to long boot times also.


----------

