Yellow and orange, blue and black, green and red: we often find that the memory slots on the motherboard have a variety of color matching. But what exactly do these color pairings mean, and how do they affect the system you configure or upgrade the current hardware?

Question: What do the yellow, blue and green memory slots on the motherboard represent?

I always see various colors on the motherboard’s memory sockets, and they appear in pairs, but I never figured out what it meant. I just inserted two pieces of memory into the slot at will, tried many times before it worked. But when I try to install the third memory stick, there will always be a blue screen of death. Should I install the memory on the motherboard in a certain order? What do these colors mean? Do these color schemes represent a chance to improve performance? Or are they just used as a guide for installing memory? What is the solution for this user’s blue screen problem?

Answer:

A pair of slots with the same color indicates that this is a dual channel set. When you install the memory module, you should install it in pairs according to the color to take advantage of the dual channel function. You should install two memory modules of the same model into the slots with the same color, and then install the other two memory modules of the same type into the remaining two slots.

Ideally, you should use memory modules of all the same model, otherwise some memory will have to be down-clocked to match the worst performance of all memory (barrel principle).

To learn more about dual-channel, triple-channel and quad-channel memory architecture, you can read the following two articles.

Tom’s Hardware Forum: How to Install Dual Channel [Memory]?

Hardware Secrets: Everything You Need to Know About Dual-, Triple-, and Quad-Channel Memory Architectures

Unfortunately, this color matching mechanism is not standardized on older motherboards. (On newer motherboards, it seems that all manufacturers have consistently followed the principle that colors represent the number of memory channels.) Therefore, the importance of carefully checking the motherboard manual before installation cannot be ignored.

Regarding the color matching question, Enigma answered very well:

“When I try to install the third memory stick, there will always be a blue screen of death. Is there a certain order to follow when I install the memory?”

The answer is yes, there is indeed an order here. As for the details, you need to check your motherboard manual. There will almost always be a detailed guide on it to tell you the order in which the memory slots should be installed and what configuration will take effect. In this way, you can easily install the memory at one time, instead of what you said: I just inserted two pieces of memory into the slot at will, and tried many times to work properly.

Because these are all related to electronic equipment and building computers, it is always better to read the manual to avoid blue screen of death (or worse-hardware damage) than trial and error. If you have any questions, you can never make a mistake in citing the guidelines in the manual.