Buying anything used is always a crap shoot.
Insure the seller has a good reputation and the item(s) are fully warranted by the seller.
What Brand is the RAM and what will it be used in?
OEM Mobo's, can be very selective about what RAM they will be compatible with.
Your Mobo will accept up to 4x1GB of PC3200 RAM though it is usually not advisable to fill all 4 slots.
Crucial is the best brand choice for OEM Mobo's.
A search like this will give you the results for new PC3200 RAM modules, and filters out most of the <1GB modules, as well as most of the laptop & ECC registered server RAM sales:
It means the RAM is unbuffered. That's the kind you want, though not all of it will be specifically listed as PC3200U. You want to steer clear of RAM listed as PC3200R, which is registered ECC memory.
The easiest way to tell if something is ECC or not is that ECC RAM will have an odd number of RAM chips on each side. Usually it's 9, vs. the typical 8 chips on non-ECC memory. Registration usually accompanies ECC (but not always), and tends to be noticeable because there are two or three small chips in the center of the module, between the two banks of 4 larger RAM chips.
While there is unbuffered, ECC RAM available, it is fairly rare. What you want is unbuffered, non-ECC RAM. There should be an even number of large RAM chips, and no registration chips on the RAM you're looking for.
You may need high density ram on some of the SFF hp desktops due to the placement of the power supply or drive bays. Lower-profile RAM is physically shorter than the higher-profile (low-desnity) ram, and therefore will fit in tighter spots in SFF or slimline computers.
RAM density doesn't have anything at all to do with how large the DIMM is physically. The chips are exactly the same size. The difference is in the internal layout. For example, PC3200 1GB low density RAM uses 64M x8 or 32M x16 RAM chips, while high density modules use 128M x4 chips. The difference is in the data width of each individual chip, which determines how many chips are required to make a single rank of a given data width. The JEDEC standards do not address the use of 4-bit data width RAM chips in desktop motherboards, so there is limited compatibility for them. Actual low-profile RAM can come in either low density or high density varieties.
As for whether high density RAM will work in your machine, it will most likely not. The Hardware Maintenance Guide for the DX5150 states that 4-bit width chips are not supported.
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