It's a small server, but it's the one I have. An old, used-to-be desktop turned web and database (and mail and file...) server. At the time, its couple of cores and PCIe video slot gave me plenty of gaming rig, and its 4GB of RAM seemed generous.

That was a few years ago. More than a few. A few  years ago I upgraded my desktop to a six-core with 8GB of RAM. I've since stopped gaming on the PC, but have been using the desktop for all kinds of development and testing that require the use of virtual machines, and they can suck up a lot of RAM.

Recently I've added a few applications to the desktop-turned-server, mostly in the form of more Tomcat instances, but also in some additional databases and other things necessary to support updated software development. The server's 4GB of RAM no longer seemed generous.

Since it's an old rig, it's using DDR2 memory (PC6400, to be precise), which has turned kind of expensive since most desktops have advanced to DDR3 memory. Since it's only used as a server, and isn't really one (in a true hardware perspective), it doesn't use ECC memory, which, oddly, is relatively inexpensive for DDR2. Alas, upgrading memory seemed like a lost opportunity, since it's not a lot more expensive to rebuild the server with updated hardware than it is to get a lot of DDR2 memory.

Perusing the likes of newegg.com for a 4x2GB kit reveals one choice (at the time of this writing) at $150; 4x4GB has a couple choices, around $400. $400 is a pretty bare-bones upgrade for a desktop-turned-server, but it can get a 6-to-8-core system with 8-or-16GB of RAM. just CPU, mainboard, and RAM. For a hair more  you can get more RAM a case and PSU, too.

I happened upon a 4x2GB PC6400 offering straight from China, for $40. I hemmed a little and hawed some, and with some egging-on by friends decided to risk the $40. It arrived the other day, and just a few minutes ago I installed it.

The server failed to boot. 

I knew before confirming in the manual that the error code displayed on the motherboard's LED that the memory was being rejected. I took a gamble, figuring I could use this to hand-me-down a 6-core for server duty and replace my desktop with a massive rig if it didn't work (in the meantime running 8GB in the server and 4GB in the desktop, or maybe 6GB in each...or back the way things were if it didn't work otherwise)., and swapped the RAM from my desktop with the server. Both machines boot as expected.

I hesitate to say anything is working "faster" or "better" than before, but the server's sitting about 50% memory used, which is the same mark it sat before although that was 95% used at the time. I expect some of the servers to spike memory use as they get used, so the real benefits are yet to be seen.

The desktop doesn't seem any worse for wear. The tiny (the sticks are barely taller than the slot latches) RAM seems to be working as well as the giant, heat-shielded stuff that was in there before. It's all PC6400, so I don't expect a lot of RAM throughput or latency differences--for my purposes, 8GB is 8GB.

The only downside (knock on wood) is that now I have some extra 1GB DDR2 memory floating around.