Want to upgrade laptop RAM- max possible?

skintpaul

OK, ‪#‎laptop‬ guru's.. what's best way to speed up my browsing- more RAM?

Dred to delve into the innard of my aging lappy, and found-

1 x 2gb, 1 x 1gb RAM chips (is it normal, to have different sizes?)..

Is there any site where I can check what max size would fit?

If it helps, it also has-
Pentium Dual Core 2.1Gh processor
Windows home premium 64 bit OS.

fermi

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Dell/inspiron-1545

John_Gray

Since you already have both memory slots filled you will have to remove either the 1 GB SODIMM and/or the 2 GB SODIMM and replace one or both with (a) larger SODIMM (s).

Adding 2 GB one instead of the 1 GB one might speed the laptop up, but probably not by much.

If you want instead to use a 4 GB SODIMM (giving a total of 6 GB memory), that's £93. Going to the maximum 8 GB will cost you £187.
Ching!

Ilija

It's not normal to have different sizes of RAM (but nothing wrong if they a are same MHz). I would recommend, buy 2 cheap 4GB of RAM of same brand (Crucial, Kingston, Corsair) and you are set to go. And upgrading RAM is not "expensive". Buy the same MHz you have now, it's usually 1600 or 1333MHz but your motherboard should be compatible with both.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Impact-PC1600-SODIMM-Notebook/dp/B00KQCOSLY/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1449404391&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMSO8GX3M2A1600C11-Select-Mainstream-Notebook/dp/B009VPW8RS/ref=sr_1_14?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1449404391&sr=1-14

Big_Graeme

At those prices you're better off going for an SSD drive, that would have the bigger impact on speed.

grumpycrab

3GB should be ok under Windows7; how many browsing tabs do you need to have open at once? An SSD may be a better value upgrade.

securityguy

"It's not normal to have different sizes of RAM (but nothing wrong if they a are same MHz)."

Indeed. Some machines use dual-channel if the two dimms are the same size, so that they interleave access between the two sides. The performance benefit of this is small, but can make a difference for very specific workloads.

As others say, it's far more likely that an SSD would be the most cost effective upgrade.

paddyrg

Speed up your /browsing/? I don't think the problem is the amount of RAM you have, possibly the hard drive is slow (laptop hard drives can be very slow in order to reduce power consumption - I swapped one for an SSD and it's like a whole new machine,seriously), possibly you just have a load of crud paging to disc and a good clearout might help, possibly your internet connection is just a bit sluggish, possibly the wireless card is a bit old and creaky, who knows? I'd genuinely doubt it to be a RAM issue though. Have you looked in Task Manager/Performance to see what it is that's capping out?

spud17

Adding more ram is really only sensible if you are regularly running out of capacity.
I'm with grumpycrab, unless you have dozens of tabs open 3GB should be sufficient for everyday browsing.
It would be more help if you could tell us, via taskmaster, how many processes you have running.
Also, via MSconfig or CCleaner, stop all unnecessary programs from starting up, often camera, phone and printer software.
When was the last time you did a reinstall?

I_have_spoken

Check what Task Manager is showing about RAM use. I gave 8Gb, but browsing doesn't use more than 3Gb.

Fightsback

Ilija wrote: »

It's not normal to have different sizes of RAM (but nothing wrong if they a are same MHz). I would recommend, buy 2 cheap 4GB of RAM of same brand (Crucial, Kingston, Corsair) and you are set to go. And upgrading RAM is not "expensive". Buy the same MHz you have now, it's usually 1600 or 1333MHz but your motherboard should be compatible with both.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Impact-PC1600-SODIMM-Notebook/dp/B00KQCOSLY/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1449404391&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMSO8GX3M2A1600C11-Select-Mainstream-Notebook/dp/B009VPW8RS/ref=sr_1_14?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1449404391&sr=1-14

Drivel, ignore that. These will not be compatible with your laptop.