i am not a security professional and i am recalling what i have read before. as mentioned some malware targets the bootloader and is persistantly loaded at startup. i am not sure what is technically correct, so maybe someone will chime in, but i don't believe ram is typically cleared after shutdown. i think it is called memory only malware. either way, i have 2 comparible 4gb ram sticks and there is only one on the pc now. so i would simply swap it for newer sticks i have to get more ram if simply performance as the storage is HDD.