Need more RAM.... any advice?

[Nail Soup]

As per my recent thread, my new PC keeps maxing out on RAM.... even though it has double the RAM of my old PC (which never maxed out on RAM) 😕

I haven't been able to fix it any other way, so I'll follow the advice to get more RAM.

 

Currently I have 8gb and have 3 free slots:

 

Can I simply buy another 8GB card and push that into one of the free slots?

I am confused by the online advice............. they seem to say to remove the old RAM. In which case why are their multiple slots?

 

 

[gjones]

First look up the specifications of your PC's motherboard to check whats the maximum RAM it can take.

 

Then take the RAM card out and check the type of RAM your card has. I upgraded the RAM in my laptop, bought the wrong type of card in error and it wouldn't fit the slot.

 

Yes I believe you can double up the RAM, or remove the old card and fit a new upgraded one of a larger capacity (if your board can take the larger amount).

 

I also cleaned the fan, so the laptop was cooled properly, and that made a big difference to the performance.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by gjones

[lowdown]

4 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

As per my recent thread, my new PC keeps maxing out on RAM.... even though it has double the RAM of my old PC (which never maxed out on RAM) 😕

I haven't been able to fix it any other way, so I'll follow the advice to get more RAM.

 

Currently I have 8gb and have 3 free slots:

 

Can I simply buy another 8GB card and push that into one of the free slots?

I am confused by the online advice............. they seem to say to remove the old RAM. In which case why are their multiple slots?

 

 

 

Have you tried the small utility over at the Crucial Ram site? It will scan your system and give you all the information you want/need. It takes a minute or two.

Don't worry about the link, it's not clickbait and doesn't slap a load of shitware/adverts on your PC.

After the scan, it will give you options you need. Once you have the info, you can either buy from them or, trawl the net to see if there are better deals on what you need.

 

https://uk.crucial.com/store/systemscanner

 

 

 

 

[MikanHannille]

You already have 8gb which means your OS is 64 bit, then it can totally utilise up to 128gb. Just make sure if you can, then get the same exact one that you already have. And look up your motherboard manual where to slot the new one in (if you have a dual channel, which is more likely looking at your screenshot as it is saying 1 of 4 slots is being used, it is usually 1, 2, 3, 4 or 1, 2, 3, 4)

Edited May 2, 2022 by MikanHannille

[Nail Soup]

1 hour ago, lowdown said:

 

Have you tried the small utility over at the Crucial Ram site? It will scan your system and give you all the information you want/need. It takes a minute or two.

Don't worry about the link, it's not clickbait and doesn't slap a load of shitware/adverts on your PC.

After the scan, it will give you options you need. Once you have the info, you can either buy from them or, trawl the net to see if there are better deals on what you need.

 

https://uk.crucial.com/store/systemscanner

 

 

 

 

Thanks. I did try that already.... it scanned my system and recommended some cards of varying sizes.

What it didn't tell me was:  to get to 16MB if a) need to buy a 8GB to add to the current 8MB card, or b)  buy a 16GB to replace it. If I understood that I 'd be happy to go with what they suggest. (of course I'm hoping for the cheaper option!)

 

 

[velvetkevorkian]

If you've got 4 slots on the board 8+8 will be fine.

[tegs07]

as above- just match the speed and form factor 

[skidder652003]

yes, as above, I added another 8 GB to my 8 GB laptop in a spare slot, same RAM card/type, works fine now as 16GB. Easy and cheap to do.

[Doctor J]

8gb is a lot of ram and your OS Win 10?) will use about 2.5gb of that. Perhaps run something like CCleaner and clear out whatever else you don't need which is starting up unnecessarily and using all that memory, too.
 

As above, buying another 8gb of the same spec as what you already have will work just fine. 

[Bunion]

I opened this thinking maybe Rage Against The Machine had dropped a new album 😞

[Nail Soup]

20 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

8gb is a lot of ram and your OS Win 10?) will use about 2.5gb of that. Perhaps run something like CCleaner and clear out whatever else you don't need which is starting up unnecessarily and using all that memory, too.
 

As above, buying another 8gb of the same spec as what you already have will work just fine. 

There does seem to be some other issue going on.... the PC shows a high memory percentage even  when just doing light tasks like browsing. A clean up might help....

[Doctor J]

For perspective, I have a W10 PC with 16gb of RAM which I use for protools stuff and I've never seen it use more than 6gb, no matter how many plugins I use. Windows can be very frugal if you spend a bit of time making sure all that is running is what it actually needs to run, but it's a very easy OS to fill up with shite which hogs resources for no useful reason.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Doctor J

[tegs07]

try opening cmd as admin

then type in: sfc /scannow

 

 

if still an issue type:

 

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth 

 

couple of general useful cmds to scan and repair file system and os corruption 

[Dad3353]

2 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

try opening cmd as admin

then type in: sfc /scannow

 

 

if still an issue type:

 

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth 

 

couple of general useful cmds to scan and repair file system and os corruption 

 

Make sure that you have adequate back-ups of anything precious (ie: that which cannot be bought, such as photos, personal documents, password lists etc...) before doing stuff of the sort. 

(Come to think of it, make sure that you have adequate back-ups, full stop.  ... )

[tegs07]

8 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Make sure that you have adequate back-ups of anything precious (ie: that which cannot be bought, such as photos, personal documents, password lists etc...) before doing stuff of the sort. 

(Come to think of it, make sure that you have adequate back-ups, full stop.  ... )

sorry i take that as a given … that said i’ve never had an issue with either cmd in many years of usage 

[Elfrasho]

think the ay to go is just to buy a matching stick of whats already in there and you'll be good to go.  I'm not an expert but i would have though 8gb would be pretty low these days anwyay?

[Nail Soup]

Thanks for the tips and comments everybody!

I think I'm ready to move forward now .........

[Leonard Smalls]

On 02/05/2022 at 17:17, Nail Soup said:

A clean up might help

 

I'd suggest going to your device manager, right click on all the USB options, open the power management tab and make sure windows can't turn the device off to annoyingly save power... Do the same for graphics and any onboard sound.

And as right click on any DAW, and make sure it always runs as administrator.

I found my laptop speeded up quite a lot after that! 

However, the 16Gb that had still tended to max out when running 6 VST instruments and 16 other tracks, all with Ozone/Neutron/Raum or Bias FX on them. So I went to Bargain Hardware, and bought a refurb HPZ440 audio workstation with 48Gb RAM, 2x Xeon 8 core processors and 3Tb of solid state storage for (wait for it) £867...

It's pretty quick!

[Nicko]

On 02/05/2022 at 17:17, Nail Soup said:

There does seem to be some other issue going on.... the PC shows a high memory percentage even  when just doing light tasks like browsing. A clean up might help....

I had a problem with my Win 8 PC which has 8GB Ram.  It wasn't the amount of RAM that was the problem it was the background processes using it all up and the CPU becoming overloaded.  Obviously high CPU usage and high RAM utilisation are linked so I'd suggest having a look at the task manage to figure out what is using what you have.  The culprit in my case was the antivirus software.  

[adamg67]

On 03/05/2022 at 22:06, Nail Soup said:

Thanks for the tips and comments everybody!

I think I'm ready to move forward now .........

Did you go for the extra RAM? If you’re going to and havnt yet, try and get as close as you can to the original, not just size and speed but manufacturer and cas level as well - if you can get the same ram, even off eBay, then go for that. Mismatched ram really can cause memory speed issues.

 

I would be tempted to check the motherboard specs and see what it supports, you might be able to get 16G of something faster for a decent price, and you can always stick the 8G on eBay.

 

As mentioned above, make sure you pick the right slot for the new stick if you do add one (often it will not be the one next to the currently populated one but will be one over).

[Nail Soup]

10 hours ago, adamg67 said:

Did you go for the extra RAM? If you’re going to and havnt yet, try and get as close as you can to the original, not just size and speed but manufacturer and cas level as well - if you can get the same ram, even off eBay, then go for that. Mismatched ram really can cause memory speed issues.

 

I would be tempted to check the motherboard specs and see what it supports, you might be able to get 16G of something faster for a decent price, and you can always stick the 8G on eBay.

 

As mentioned above, make sure you pick the right slot for the new stick if you do add one (often it will not be the one next to the currently populated one but will be one over).

No, I bottled it I’m afraid.

Still a bit outside my comfort zone….. 

[adamg67]

2 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

No, I bottled it I’m afraid.

Still a bit outside my comfort zone….. 

 

Have you got the motherboard make & model? It should be printed on there somewhere, if you post a pic of that and of the RAM I'll have a look at what's what.

Edited June 17, 2022 by adamg67

[Nail Soup]

18 minutes ago, adamg67 said:

 

Have you got the motherboard make & model? It should be printed on there somewhere, if you post a pic of that and of the RAM I'll have a look at what's what.

Thanks…. I’ll have a look after work.

[Nail Soup]

3 hours ago, adamg67 said:

 

Have you got the motherboard make & model? It should be printed on there somewhere, if you post a pic of that and of the RAM I'll have a look at what's what.

 

According to msinfo32

 

According to Crucial (https://uk.crucial.com/store/systemscanner , suggested by @lowdown) Ram is M378A1K43EB2-CWE

[adamg67]

Okay… so first thing to say is that this is just what the BC hive mind has already said above but in more detail (I’ve got time to poke about on the iPad while laid up with everyone’s favourite virus, although my temperature at any given time can limit my ability to think straight  )

 

I couldn’t find that part number for sale in the uk (not genuine Samsung anyway) or on the Samsung site but did find it on a US site which had the main specs, which look right based on what’s on the Samsung site for similar part numbers: https://harddiskdirect.com/m378a1k43eb2-cwe-samsung-8gb-pc4-25600-ddr4-3200mhz-non-ecc-unbuffered-cl22-udimm-1-2v-single-rank-memory-modules.html

 

Specs are: 8GB PC4-25600 DDR4-3200MHz non-ECC Unbuffered CL22 UDIMM 1.2V Single-Rank Memory Module

 

Lenovo aren’t very helpful with mobo manuals, so even if the memory is replaced the safest thing to do is stick to that spec and you know the motherboard supports it. If the crucial scanner is right you can go up to 32G in a slot so that spec in 8, 16 or 32G should be good, bearing in mind that you need the same size modules if there are more than one.

 

The good news is that looks like a pretty common spec so you can go with a sensible make, a couple of obvious examples for 8 and 16 gig:

 

https://www.cclonline.com/ct8g4dfra32a-crucial-8gb-1x8gb-3200mhz-ddr4-memory/

https://www.cclonline.com/ct16g4dfra32a-crucial-16gb-1x16gb-3200mhz-ddr4-memory/

 

Couple of obvious Options:

 

1. Get one of the crucial 8G modules, or something similar, and add it alongside the Samsung. Specs are good, but run a full memory test (there are memory test tools that boot off a USB drive and do some mad clever tests, and some newer ones that don’t need to be be bootable that I havn’t tried). If there are any issues, you’ve got the option of swapping the original Samsung module out for a second crucial one, after checking everything is in the right slot etc, and sticking the Samsung one on eBay. You’re also on relatively popular and easy to source memory so if you want to go up again (you would have to double it to 32G) you can, but you shouldn’t need to.

 

2. Get one of crucial 16G modules and stick the Samsung 8G one on eBay. No need to guess about slots (although that should be easy) just replace one with the other. Although there’s no guarantee the old memory will sell there’s a pretty good chance if you put the full specs on. I’d stick it on for £40 posted and see what happens. Again you’re on something common so can upgrade if you want. This would probably be what I’d do.

obviously happy for other people to chip in (like it would matter if I wasn’t  ), I’m just an enthusiastic amateur with desktop hardware.