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    Questions about laptop Ram

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by cylpol1, Aug 2, 2015.

  1. cylpol1

    cylpol1 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I was looking at this laptop and had come with 4gb of intergrated ram and an empty so-dimm slot to go up to
    12 gb of ram. Will I have compatibility issues if I add another 4 or 8 stick of ram. Will that new stick of ram have compatibility issues with the integrated one if they are using different brands of ram. Also is there a way to disable the integrated ram. Also which ram will the computer use first, the integrated on or the so-dimm one. Anyways hopefully you guys can help and feedback is much appreciated and helpful.
     
    cylpol1, Aug 2, 2015
    #1
  2. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    What notebook are you looking at? Sometimes upgrading notebooks that have onboard memory is a little trickier. In those situations, I suggest buying an 8GB stick from the notebook manufacturer that is listed as compatible - then you have definite recourse if it doesn't work.

    Charles
     
    Charles P. Jefferies, Aug 2, 2015
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  3. kent1146

    kent1146 Notebook Prophet

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    You didn't list the make / model of your laptop, so you're going to need to do some of your own research on this.

    The easiest thing to do is just look up the maximum amount of RAM supported by your laptop, and buy a compatible memory module. If your laptop can support 8GB and 12GB, then you'll be fine buying a 4GB or 8GB SODIMM to expand your memory. There shouldn't be compatibility problems with RAM, as long as you buy a SODIMM that is within spec of what will work in your laptop. You may want to do some research on this forum to see if any other owner of your laptop had success upgrading their RAM, and ask them what brand of RAM they used.

    Additionally, there isn't any need to disable the existing onboard RAM. All of the RAM on a computer is forced to operate at the same speed and specification (or else it won't work at all), so you'll never run into a situation where some portion of your RAM is "faster" than the rest. And it also won't matter if your computer uses onboard or expansion RAM first. If your computer has 12GB of RAM, then it will just freely use the 12GB of RAM. There will not be a situation where some portion of your RAM will "fill up" first, before using the rest.
     
    kent1146, Aug 3, 2015
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