I want to install more than the supported amount of RAM on my PC. Is it likely to work? [closed]

"I have done it before and it has worked fine, however I noticed that the manual stated 2GB's, however the chipset specification said 4GB.

I think that generally speaking, it should work if you check the specification of the chipset. If the chipset doesn't support it, it is unlikely to work.

As for why - the reason probably is the computer just doesn't understand how to use it.

Looking at the Intel G31 information page (What your motherboard has) It states:

Dual-Channel DDR2 Memory Support

Delivers up to 12.8GB/s (DDR2 800
dual 6.4GB/s) of bandwidth and 4GB
memory addressability for faster
system responsiveness and support of
64-bit computing.

Based on this, I do not think it will work."

"I agree with Wil and bobince and Benjamin Schollnick, you can't add more RAM than the motherboard can address.

I do have a suggestion: if you would like to spend money to speed up your system and your RAM is maxed out, a solid-state hard drive for $200 and up (for the good quality Intel drives) can be significantly faster than spinning-disk setups. And they use memory, so you could argue it's a memory upgrade if not RAM. Our host Jeff Atwood thinks they're great: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001304.html"

I agree with Wil, it's not going to happen on a G31. Whilst some maximum-memory limitations can be beatable with BIOS upgrades and newer, more dense memory, the 4GB limit in particular is a hard one, because as soon as you go above it you need more than 32 bits to address all the physical memory.