new PC's: why they only sell DIMMS in pairs?

[Blaqb0x]

Hi,

I'm looking into getting a new PC. I was looking at DELL, HP, IBM,gateway, and monarch.

I noticed that most of the above only sell you DIMMS in pairs. Most of the workstations that I looked at had 4 DIMM banks but, you had to buy memory in pairs like 1GB (2x 512MB DIMMS) why won't they just give you 1 bank with 1GB DIMM?

[trickster]

Depending on the kind of memory, some types don't work singles (like RDRam.) Another reason might be that, if your 1GB dimm breaks, you are out of memory. Also, probably 2 512mb of memory are less expensive than 1 1gb.

[mcdougrs]

I'm guessing you went to customize each of these to see if they did offer the 1 DIMM solution? If not, and it was just the default setup that had 2 DIMMs then that would be because of price. The smaller DIMMs are cheaper for some reason.

[Compunuts]

[quote author=trickster link=board=3;threadid=9080;start=0#msg82169 date=1082652801]
Also, probably 2 512mb of memory are less expensive than 1 1gb.
[/quote]
If my experience with PC MFG goes ( about 6 years ), then that's the reason. It's cheaper ( and much more flexible ) to make smaller memory sticks and sell them cheap. The chips for smaller memory boards are cheaper in fabrication process as well.

Plus, when you run out of memory upgrades ( due to memory banks limitation on your board ), then you are much more incline to buy more and threw away what you have ( thus replacing it instead of adding it ).

[CP]

Most of the new motherboards support dual channel. Another thing is the demand for 1GB sticks of memory is low, so the price is still relatively high, yet everyone wants 512MB, so that makes it cheaper to buy 2 512MB sticks.
CP