An Easy Upgrade
When your laptop is slow, the way to improve things is often an upgrade of laptop RAM. But not always.
Computer issues of speed don’t necessarily reside in how much ‘surplus’ memory is or isn’t available. And that means a “should or shouldn’t” upgrade determination isn’t as simple as figuring out if you have an open memory slot.
So let’s talk about when an upgrade of laptop RAM does make sense, and how it’s done.
You might luck out for under $30
Money
As a motivator for your troubles, it is not unreasonable to upgrade to 8GB of laptop RAM (in the form of two 4GB sticks) for under $30. That sure beats the cost of replacing an aging system with a new one. Just make sure you confirm all the important facts before parting with funds.
Note that our cheat sheet is geared toward laptops, not desktops. While the process is similar, there are some differences in procedure not covered here. With that out of the way, read on.
When To Consider RAM
Your laptop bogs down. It slows to a crawl as you start running multiple programs. It boots very slow and yet your startup file looks pretty bare. Perhaps it completely hangs or takes so long you do a hard reboot because you are unsure what that frozen screen means.
What Is RAM
Random Access Memory or RAM is the means by which your computer gets things done quickly and efficiently.
It is the short term memory of your computer and it’s there to help speed along tasks. It ‘touches’ the programs, actions, and services that are running constantly in your active applications as well as background processes.
Unlike your hard drive, it has no ability to store information at system shutdown. RAM ‘forgets’ everything. A modern computer can not function without RAM.
Proceed at your own risk.
Before You Begin
Like everything in the do-it-yourself realm, proceed at your own risk. Missteps could result in damage to your hardware, your pride, or I suppose even you!
An important caveat here. Some laptops do NOT make this RAM upgrade easy. Either you can not access the RAM or it is not a simple plug and play option. It is a very good idea to go to your laptop manufacturer’s website and type in your model number to get the specifics on your particular computer before buying anything.
Make Sure It’s RAM
The first thing to do is to determine what is going on with your slow computer. We will assume you are running Windows 10, like much of the civilized world.
Chris Hoffman of howtogeek.com does an excellent job of troubleshooting resource hogs and a step through of the Task Manager in detail. You can check out his article here.
1 – Break Out Task Manager
Make sure the programs you’ve noticed problems with or normally use are open, and then press the “Ctrl + Alt + Delete” keys simultaneously. This will bring up your Security Options.
Select the “Task Manager” option.
Alternatively, click on the Search Box (magnifying glass) and type “Task Manager”. From the choices that appear, select “Task Manager App”.
2 – Evaluate Your System
Go to the second tab “Performance“, and take a look at what exactly is going on in your system. What we are looking for here is how your memory is being utilized. For instance, you might see your RAM has apparently very high utilization (95%+).
You immediately think that’s a problem. But then you notice that your hard drive utilization is very low.
In other words, you have absolutely no performance issues in this example (no lagging), and RAM is probably NOT the source of your problems here (unless it is physically failing, another matter entirely).
In this instance you are unlikely to see a big benefit to adding RAM.
But if your Performance tab is telling you that your RAM is maxed out, and your hard drive performance level is equally red-lined (hard drive is constantly spinning), you probably could benefit from an upgrade of laptop RAM.
To read more about the technical aspects of what is going on here, read Hoffman’s other article about it here.
Note in the Task Manager photo above, we’ve got low utilization of the CPU and no apparent memory swapping going on with the hard drive. This was taken after the addition of more RAM. Prior to that the systems were max’d out.
3 – Which RAM?
So you need RAM, but what kind? And how much of an upgrade of the laptop’s RAM is appropriate? And what channel? I like the hardware analysis tool available as a free download at CPUID.com. (Select the “CPU-Z” option).
Confirm RAM before buying. It matters.
Once loaded and run it will give you the key hardware information for your computer. Your alternative is visually inspecting your RAM stick manufacturing label physically.
This first approach is much easier.
4 – Run CPUID.COM
So we run the program and up pops a small box.
Click on the fourth tab, “Memory” and note the specifics it lists. You’ll need these when you go to Amazon, Newegg, or another retailer to acquire memory sticks.
It will give you some good data that helps in the ordering process. You care about Type (such as DDR3), Channel, existing Size (e.g., 4 GB).
Now click on the fifth tab “SPD” (Serial Presence Detect). And you should see some more key data.
Here we care about the Module Manufacturer of your RAM, the Part Number, and the number of slots currently used by your RAM.
Note, if you click on the Slot button you can see how many slots you are utilizing (click on each slot, if you get data, you’ve got a RAM stick in there. If blanked and greyed out, you don’t have any RAM there, or you don’t have a slot).
5 – Check Online Suppliers
Head to one of the retailers of your choice and enter in the specs above. This *should* ensure your upgrade of the laptop RAM is compatible with your motherboard and other laptop hardware. If possible, I buy the same manufacturer as original.
You might give “Troubleshooting” below a read before plunking down any money, just to see what could go wrong, so it hopefully doesn’t.
Unless you are replacing your existing RAM, you should probably not bother paying more for RAM with a higher MHz (clock speed).
While in theory the higher the MHz, the faster your RAM will be, your laptop will operate at the lowest MHz of any one memory stick and the limitations of your motherboard. I just go with what is already there.
Installation
So you have your shiny new RAM. Installation should be a breeze. Unplug your laptop. Flip it over and remove the battery.
Make sure you are not carrying a static electrical charge by touching something metal before contact with the circuitry.
Now we need to remove the housing for your RAM. To do so, flip your laptop over and locate the screw points holding the laptop cover plate in place (note circled screws).
Unscrew the back of this compartment (probably also the housing for the hard drive), via the screws at those circled points.
Remove the laptop cover. If your design is like many out there, the laptop cover will actually slide off, rather than lift straight off, to remove it.
Now you are ready to upgrade the laptop RAM with new stick(s). Carefully line up the RAM slot with your memory sticks to install them.
Install them with a gentle press. Note in the photo how the RAM goes in at an angle before ‘snapping’ into place via the small metal arms on each side of the RAM stick. You should hear a ‘click’ as it fully seats. Do not force anything here.
The RAM below was incorrectly installed.
Also, look carefully in the photo below. This shot shows us two RAM memory sticks installed. Do you see a problem?
Look at the gold contact points on the RAM memory at the “top” RAM stick (arrow), you’ll note you can see quite a bit of the contact surface (gold).
While the RAM memory stick did seem to fully seat, it actually did not. Because the RAM memory stick beneath it was properly seated, the laptop booted up just fine.
This is why it is important to “check your work” upon completion of this upgrade (see below for how to do that).
Next up, reverse the process. So slide the HDD-SSD/RAM cover back into place. Carefully re-seat the screws holding that cover in place, and tighten them down gently.
Install the battery, plug your laptop back in…and you’re almost done!
Check Your Work
Now just go to systems stats (type “system information in your search box in Windows 10). Scroll down the list until you get to memory. You should now see your new total (e.g., 8 GB). If you see what you started with here (e.g., 4 GB), then you know you’ve got a problem.
Troubleshooting
Hopefully it was just a failure to carefully seat your new RAM. But, it could also be that you have defective memory or other issues.
You can troubleshoot this by switching your memory sticks out – either with each other to check the laptop slots, or fitting them solo and checking laptop operation for each memory stick independently. While this sounds time-consuming, it is actually a few minutes for each test. Easy enough.
So, let’s say you’ve carefully fitted the upgrade of laptop RAM sticks, switched them out carefully and rebooted each time, to confirm all the memory is fine. Now what?
Well, I’d recommend you boot into BIOS (check your manufacturer instructions on this step) and navigate to your memory. What do you see there? Is it the full RAM you expected? If so, what may be going on is that your version of Windows doesn’t support the RAM you’ve installed. See specs from Microsoft here.
In the photo above, we can see what happens when RAM that fits into appropriate memory slots is not actually compatible with the laptop. This computer would not boot into the OS.
Other sources of issues beyond Windows memory limits, defective RAM, and poor installation…can include a motherboard which isn’t compatible with what you’ve installed, or similar to this, exceeding the RAM capabilities of your motherboard.
This basically circles back to carefully checking manufacturer specs and compatibility specs (via memory vendors online) prior to buying anything. If you do your homework in advance, these problems will hopefully not be ones you face. Thanks for reading.