When playing a game or streaming a video on your computer, the CPU, graphics card, and other devices depend on RAM to provide you with the best possible experience. This essential memory comes in the form of a rectangular circuit board with chips attached, also known as a RAM module, which is usually mounted inside the computer's case or on its motherboard. If you need to figure out what kind of RAM your computer has, there are several different ways you can do this, the easiest of which involves using Windows' built-in tools and features.
The RAM chip is designed to be fast and provides a huge advantage over storage memory, which can take much longer to read data from or write to. This speed advantage is why RAM is referred to as random access memory, whereas storage memory is known as sequential access memory.
Most consumer RAM modules will come with a label that indicates what kind of RAM it is, including the capacity and configured memory speed. This can be found on a sticker applied directly to the stick of RAM, engraved into the fancy heat spreader on higher-performance modules, or printed directly onto the circuit board.
The most common RAM module type is known as a dual in-line memory module, or DIMM for short. DIMMs originally came with 168-pin connectors supporting 64-bit data buses, which doubles the number of address lines on a DRAM chip and therefore allows for faster data transfers. More recent versions of DIMMs are based on fourth-generation double data rate (DDR4) SDRAM and feature 288-pin connectors for even more impressive performance.