P170EM ram upgrade

i am thinking of upgrading my ram to 16gb , my laptop currently is running a 4gb 1600mhz sumsung dimm which used to be from a 8gb dual channel the other stick died a couple of years ago i then installed a 1333mhz samsung 2x2gb kit from a macbook .i am thinking of getting a single 8gb muskin dimm to get to 16gb , or should i get an 16gb kit with the same memorys? will an apple kit be a problem? also does my current setup have any problems , performance wise?
thanks

 

Try to match make, model, and speeds across all SODIMMs, it's ideal for stability (not to say you can't get away with doing otherwise).

Mac/Apple certified memory makes no difference, it's the same memory that any PC uses.

 

If you get 2x8gb 1600 and the same timings you could put the 4gb in too.

 

mine is 11-11-11-28 at 1.5v
will a ddr3l one at the same timings but at 1.35v work at the same timings at 1.5v
this is the on i am thinking about:
http://www.poweredbymushkin.com/Home/index.php/products2/item/7-apple-memory/654-977038a

 

Yes 1.35V ram works fine at 1.5v, it's the other way round that would be an issue.

The timings are independent of voltage. The system will use the slowest timing of any stick in the set for each one.

 

Unless you need more memory, don't change what you have. You currently have the fastest DDR3 memory. Overclock it to 2133 MHz 9-10-10 using Intel XTU. If that is unstable you can at the very least run 2000 MHz at those timings. Any other memory needs higher latencies for those speeds.

If you want more memory get an extra 4GB stick of what you currently have.

 

All of it wont really matter to your day to day computing though. Then you are fighting if the sticks will run that, if the IMC will run that. Sourcing those specific chips is difficult and he already has a mismatched setup.

 

He's not really mismatched currently. His 3 sticks all use the same memory chips. Two are just the 1333 2GB rated version while one is 1600 4GB of the same thing.

No matter what though he should overclock those things. Very fast sticks and it's a shame not to. Yeah the extra bandwidth from overclocking doesn't help much, but the latency improvement can be significant.

If you happen to pick settings that are unbootable, just pull one stick for one boot. That will reset memory settings. That's really the most harm you can do.

 

If you are doing anything important the potential memory instability is just not worth it.

 

i can overclock the memory on this particular laptop?
i am playing some games occasionally and i am mostly doing college projects, coding cad etc and the ram runs out the moment i open the browser (i am using chrome )
stability wise i am not experiencing any issues (except if i use hibernation for a couple of days which i believe is normal)
to overclock it should i run custom bios?
i thought that ivy bridge supported up to 1600mhz memory ,will faster memory have any improvements?

 

Very mild improvements, if you are doing work on it then I would leave it.

 

For games you likely won't notice an improvement in overclocking memory. In hard computing though it may have a major factor. You don't need to modify bios. Whatever you have will support Intel XTU for overclocking.

As for stability, a really good program for memory testing is this chinese program called TM5. Memory testing programs aren't foolproof though. Oddball subtimings that are too tight can still give you occasional BSODs while passing memory stability tests. Odds are though if it passes an hour or so of TM5 that it is completely stable.

It sounds like you really do need more memory though. The simplest way to do that is just buy a single 8GB stick and add it to what you have like you were thinking. You'll start losing memory bandwidth when going over 12 GB of usage since one memory channel will have 10GB while the other has 6GB, but this is not a big deal. Matching memory sticks is insignificant on performance.

 

Just make sure to pair the 4 and 8 together.

 

i will either go for the 8gb stick or the 2x8gb (adding the 2gb sticks in the empty slots won't be a good idea?) i installed Intel XTU but i don't have any access to overclocking(i wanted to see if it was capable) i have an i7 3610qm overclocking it or the ram requires custom BIOS if not mistaken?

 

Your CPU should be locked but the memory should still be overclockable. You do not need a custom BIOS.

 

here are the options i have

 

That should not be blank. Try installing an older version on XTU. I typically use version 3.2, but I think up through version 5 works as well.

I have also found that XTU does not work well with high RAM usage, and you're using almost all of the RAM in that screenshot.

 

thanks, version 3.2 works

 

Just take it slow on tuning.