Upgrading laptop RAM

Wife’s work has just been giving some of their old kit away, so she grabbed me an Asus one. 2.3ghz i5 with GeForce GT card which uses 1Gb of RAM.

The laptop itself only has 4gb though and has one slot used, three spare. It’s DDR3 1333 so is it as simple as buying 2x8gb, remove the old memory and whack in the new stuff? It’s been a while since I’ve done this and I seem to recall it having to be in pairs? Or is that not such an issue now? (IE can I just whack 2x8gb into the spare slots and have 20gb of ram – well, 19 if the graphics card is using 1gb? Seems to be around 40 quid for 16gb which seems fair to me.

pop the details into curcial Uk advisor tool and take the info* and look for cheaper resellers 😀
Also an SSD drive will actually increase the speed more significantly

*which will include the maximum the laptop will take, so 16Gb may not be an option.

RAM doesn’t have to be in matched pairs. But if it is, it can use dual channel mode, which is a bit faster. Depends on the motherboard, may have to be in specific slots for each channel.
Probaly wouldn’t notice much speed difference for most things anyway.

If it had to be fitted in pairs the existing single stick wouldn’t work… (-:

Other than that, what the other two posters said. It is as simple as you say, but the largest module you can fit will be limited by what the chipset supports.

How easy or difficult it will be to get at the sockets will be wholly dependent on laptop model. Does it really have 4 slots? That’s unusual.

What cougar said.
The good news is second hand Ddr3 is pretty cheap, so I’d just max out the ram capacity, I wouldn’t worry about buying duel channel matched sticks, I think quantity over quality would be the way to go.

That said 8gb total should be plenty unless you’re gaming or using some ram intensive apps.

Cougar you make a good point about the existing single stick of ram! Sometimes the obvious isn’t so obvious eh!?

Fair do’s. I’ll whack an 8gb module in and see how that goes. The other annoying thing is the wifi module only does 2.4ghz but I’ve disabled wifi and just stuck a network cable in.

Check your version of Windows, 32 bit Windows can only use 4GB.

PS 2.4Ghz is fine, my 5ghz is disabled as the hub appears to be faulty. Still whizzes along.

64bit Windows 7

Doesn’t look like I can do the free upgrade to Windows 10 now?

I lose about 20mb on our other laptop using 2.4 as opposed to 5 no matter what channel… Same on my phone. Not a huge problem though if I’m using ethernet.

Doesn’t look like I can do the free upgrade to Windows 10 now?

It apparently still works fine, even though MS say the offer has ended. Even if it doesn’t recognize the Win7 serial number, you should still be able to revert to the old version, the upgrade saves the old files for this purpose.

You can get a Win 10 Pro product key on EBaY for bobbins (I’ve paid around £3). Worth doing I’d say.

2.4Ghz vs. 5Ghz is only going to make any difference copying internally (on your network) unless you’ve got a Gb link up to your ISP. Even then I seriously doubt you’d notice in real world use.

SSD around 40 for 250, if it really has 4 slots you got a bargain.. most laptops are 2 1 or none these days. SSD and 8Gb would be ample but 40 for 16Gb is a no brainer… just for resale alone.
With both it’ll fly even with an older i5

Doesn’t look like I can do the free upgrade to Windows 10 now?

Officially the offer has ended, but MS still offer the free upgrade to people with accessibility requirements. In practice you can just download the installer from MS and crack on.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Even if it doesn’t recognize the Win7 serial number

It will.

If you do an in-place upgrade then it won’t ask for a key at all. If it’s a clean install (which it will be if you’ve fitted an SSD at the same time) then you can just fire in your W7 OEM key and it’ll work fine.

You can get a Win 10 Pro product key on EBaY for bobbins (I’ve paid around £3). Worth doing I’d say.

Seems like a good way of wasting £3.

Seems like a good way of wasting £3.

Depends if you have a product key or not to start with doesn’t it clever clogs, rebuilt plenty of PCs for people that have no OEM sticker, no working HDD etc. – I actually meant the upgrade was worth doing

If you don’t have the key (which you generally will have unless the writing on the sticker has worn off) it’s seconds of a job to extract it from the OS.

If you have neither the OEM key nor a working HDD then yes, you’d need a W7 / W8.1 / W10 key of some form. But you’d have to be particularly unlucky to be in that situation and at any rate that’s not the case here.

I’ll give it a blast tonight. I did read that if it asks for anything you just click “yeah whatever ok…” and carry on using it. If I can stick 10 on in, great. The Win7 key is as clear and clean as the day it was stuck on the bottom. I have a feeling it was connected to a monitor and external keyboard and mouse as it’s pretty darn mint condition all round. Didn’t need masses of RAM as it was connected to the server and I also guess the HDD got very little use for the same reason.

if it really has 4 slots you got a bargain

I’ve not opened it up, but used an app to identify what RAM was already in there. Showed slot one in use and 2,3,4 as being empty apparently. Could be a glitch though.

Got a 1Tb drive split into 2 (roughly) 500gb partitions. Certainly not complaining. Keyboard is really quite nice on it too. I’ll get the model number and post it up tonight.

Cougar
If it’s a clean install (which it will be if you’ve fitted an SSD at the same time) then you can just fire in your W7 OEM key and it’ll work fine.

Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying that a Win 7 OEM key can be entered and accepted during a clean install of W10?

Precisement.

Cougar

Subscriber

Precisement.

Nice one, thanks. 👌

Well I’ve just installed 10 over the top of 7 and at no point did it ask for a key or any kind of activation.

Having just used the Crucial memory tool, it says I’ve got 2 slots, one of which has 4gb in, and the max RAM I can have is 8. I’ve opened up the back and yup, 2 slots, one occupied with Hynix ram.

So the manufacturer says the max ram is 8gb, but whats to stop me just whacking another 8gb into the spare slot giving me 12gb altogether?

It likely won’t read it. May not accept 8Gb dimms either, the crucial tool is usually pretty good.

Had a Macbook that would only read 3Gb (not an OS limitation) although it would accept 2Gb dimms in each slot. You might be able to plead ‘made a mistake’ and return it? To be honest 8Gb will likely be plenty with an SSD.

Fair do’s.

4gb ddr3 1333 is $36 AUD. That’ll do. And, Win10 is already noticeably faster / smoother. I don’t think I’ll bother with an SSD, just the extra 4gb will do. Appreciate all the info.

Laptop is an Asus K53sc

Asus Specs and A N Other site quote 8 max too – game over I’d say.

SSD is well worth the £40 for a 250 if you don’t need the capacity at some point. I’d have gone mem > ssd too, every time, but just switched my mums old desktop – 4Gb as is but the hdd failed, SSD and its unrecognizable in speed and snap. More than good enough for her needs.

Well it’s only got 4 in and 1 is used in the graphics. Found a bloke selling 2 x 4gb Kingston modules so ordered that {20 quid}. Have to say, really impressed that win10 went on flawlessly and feels pretty good. It’s never gonna be a high end gaming rig and I might try an ssd in the future. Cheers again.

An SSD, if you don’t already have one, is the best performance upgrade you can possibly buy, you can get a 240gb drive for less than £30.. And it notably improves general performance for everything.

I still have old fashioned drives for general storage, but an SSD is a must for your main drive.

Well I’ve just installed 10 over the top of 7 and at no point did it ask for a key or any kind of activation.

It won’t (and never will again as W10 is now activated against your machine), it’ll read the key from the existing installation.

whats to stop me just whacking another 8gb into the spare slot

Max supported RAM is limited by the chipset and (to a much lesser extent) CPU. Irrespective of how much room you have on the table, you can’t pour a pint into a half-pint pot.

If I did an image of the OS that’s on the SATA drive, and copy it onto the SSD, would Windows have issues with the hardware change?

New ram is on the way, will look at an SSD in the near future – 250gb drives are about $50AUD

It shouldn’t do. Though personally I’d be looking at the opportunity to do a clean install from scratch.