Will Mac RAM work on a PC?

I have some Mac RAM at school that is not being used. It has never been opened before, and one of the PC's needs a little extra. Will putting Mac RAM in be an issue? The RAM also is not labelled, how can I tell the speeds of it?

Solution 1:

I don't see why it wouldn't work. IF the speeds (e.g. 1066, 1600, 800, etc) and the type of RAM (DDR1, DDR2, DDR3) is the same on both computers, it should work. It should say on the package of the RAM what the MHz (speed) or the RAM is and the type of RAM it is. If not, it should say on one side of the actual stick of RAM. It is very clearly printed on the stick of RAM, but if it is like in this case, and you have this RAM working in a computer, run CPU Z to figure out what type of RAM it is. Other than those way of identifying it, it will be weird...

Solution 2:

One big thing to note here is that modern Macs (with the exception of the Mac Pro) take SO-DIMM (laptop memory) rather than DIMM as you'll find in PCs (this is just a space-saving move on Apple's part). This means that the RAM is not usable in most desktop PCs, with very few exceptions. This is just because of a form-factor mismatch, it's the same technology but in a different physical package than desktop PC motherboards accept. It will be usable in most laptops.

Note that the Mac Pro takes RAM in a full-size DIMM package, but requires "fully buffered" FB-DIMMs. FB-DIMMs offer better memory density but require more expensive modules and controllers. So these RAM modules are only usable in other machines that expect FB-DIMMs, typically Xeon architecture servers.