Heat generated inside laptop: 1866mhz RAM vs 1333 mhz RAM

I plan to upgrade my ram for my laptop and was wondering would the 1866mhz ram run hotter inside than 1333mhz ram? I am currently using a SSD too. Does an increase in RAM only benefit me only if I exceed 100%? I am currently at 80% average RAM usage. If I double the capacity and say run at 40%, would there be other benefits to increased RAM in terms of system performance? I am already using a RAM disk too.

 

You don't have to worry about heat from RAM. If you're at 80% RAM usage, I'd upgrade if you can, superfetch would benefit from the extra RAM, it should also reduce access to the hard drive from your various programs somewhat.

 

The voltage would determine how much heat it produces; that value should be listed on the RAM's specifications. Either way I agree the heat produced by RAM should be a non-issue.

Side note - is your notebook able to utilize 1866MHz RAM? Depending on the processor/motherboard, it could be limited. My laptop for example uses 1066MHz RAM; if I installed 1333MHz, it would downclock and run at 1066MHz anyway.

 

Indeed, but sometimes, the price difference is no negligible and if you can get lower latencies, it might not be a bad deal to buy faster clocked RAM. I've seen 1333 MHz RAM and 1066 MHz retail for the same price a few times. It doesn't really apply in the OP's case though, he's locked to whatever RAM is soldered in the notebook. I agree with Charles, there is no need to get 1866 MHz RAM if the soldered one is rates at 1333 MHz or 1600 MHz, 1866 MHz RAM is pretty expensive actually. In your case, stick to whatever the RAM in your laptop is rated at.

 

If you have SSD then disable superfetch, as well as prefetch. That should save some RAM. But upgrade RAM if you can. You can set lower pagefile to decrease writes to SSD and give system some fresh air/ram

 

There is one more thing which comes to my mind - manufacturing process, just like in case of CPUs. Many RAM manufacturers produce their chips at ~20nm today, in the past it used to be ~30nm and more. The smaller the process, the lesser the heat.
I think that often 1333MHz RAM was made using higher than ~30nm process, while 1866MHz was most likely to be made in ~30nm or lower process. Of course, correct me if I'm wrong please.