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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Power decrease after installing RAM

Rocketmail - Dec 5, 2006 - 4:29 am

I installed an additional 1 GB of RAM previously and now my battery works only for about an hour. I used to watch more than 1 DVD movie and now stops after 1 h. When I check the memory with system profiler I see SODIMM lower (512 MB) and upper (1 G). Total 1.5 GB. Looks ok. RAM is from Kensington. I work on a Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz, bought it 2 years ago.

grggary - Dec 6, 2006 - 7:28 am

This may seem a little TOO obvious, but have you tried removing the extra SODIMM to test your battery's longevity without it? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if it actually is due to the new RAM or possibly another source. Since the problem started after the RAM installation, you may want to revert to the earlier state and test it.

Rocketmail - Dec 8, 2006 - 9:05 am

Sorry. Needed a little time to figure out how to get bach here. I removed the RAM 1G and battery status went up to 1 h 40 min again. Not that great but ok. Another thing: spotlight is working properly again. Was flickering during the 1.5 G trial. Results came, before I could click on one everything was gone came again went again and so on. Pain in the ass and the whole powerbook heated up, not normal. Vibrations. Applications were faster but with all the other side effects... I try again now with only the 1G. Remove the other one if possible, than check.

grggary - Dec 9, 2006 - 9:02 pm

This one is interesting. I think I'm going to open this ticket back up to another tech that knows a little more about the machine you're using. If it runs sine without the 512k DIMM there may be some kind of conflict between the two. Better place you in better hands, so I'll reopen this and let one of my counterparts see if they've encountered this problem before.

ishan - Dec 10, 2006 - 5:07 am

I think it's just coincidence. RAM chips draw very little power. You have a two year old battery, and that's fairly old. You can try to "reset" the calibration on the battery (instruction are on Apple's support web pages), and there are freeware "battery tester" programs which will tell you what shape your battery is in as well. Check on versiontracker.com and macupdate.com for the software. I suspect, however, that you will need a new battery.

Hope that helps and please let us know what happens. Thanks.

Rocketmail - Dec 10, 2006 - 8:02 am

Sorry. I have to add this one: the battery is brand new and works perfectly (checked it with system profiler as stated on the apple site). Battery exchange programm. So it must be sth else. Waste of money after all I guess.

Thanks for helping

ishan - Dec 10, 2006 - 10:49 am

So, if it's not the battery, can you exchange the I GB RAM chip from the vendor? If you can and your PB works properly, it was just bad RAM. If it still doesn't work properly, since the odds of getting two bad RAM chips is low, then it's a motherboard problem and not something you're likely to able to fix by yourself. Sorry.