So you have a laptop or a PC and you notice that it cant bear a lot of programs running simultaneously? Well, this might be the time to upgrade your RAM.
Do I really need a RAM-upgrade?
Basically, RAM resides right between the processor and your hard drive. Whenever you run a program, it gets loaded into the RAM and the processor can access it from there. This is mainly because RAM is much faster while storage drives (like hard drives) cant cope up with high speeds of the processor.
Now getting to the point, you should have more RAM available especially if you usually run a number of programs in parallel. A typical example would be opening a lot of browser tabs. To upgrade the RAM you should know first how much RAM you already have and how many slots for RAM are available in your machine. You can do this in two ways;
1) Open up your laptop and see what you have got.
2) Install a little utility called 'CPU-Z' and it will tell you how many slots area available on your motherboard and how many of them are occupied. Also, what kind of RAM your machine does support.
Things to consider when buying a RAM module:
After you have the information about the available slots and the type of memory you need, you can go ahead and buy some RAM sticks. There are some good practices while having multiple RAMs.
1) You are better off using same sized memory sticks. For instance if one RAM stick is of 4 GB and you are adding one more, you should add a 4 GB as well rather than a 2 or 8GB. This generally results in best performance.
2) Buying a RAM module rated at a higher BUS speed than the existing RAM module wont give you any benefit. The chipset will clock down all the modules to the speed of the module capable of slowest speeds.
3) If your mother board have multiple channels for RAM, try plugging same sized module on same channels.
How to install additional RAM:
In this example I am upgrading a Lenovo G580 notebook. It had 2GB of RAM and I added 2 GB more. To start the upgrade, you have to get access to the RAM slots. This varies in case of every machine. Some laptops have a small access port that exposes RAM slots when unscrewed while some notebooks require taking the bottom cover off. In some cases (usually in case of ultrabooks), you might need to disassemble the notebook fully as the RAM modules might be hiding deep inside the notebook. In any case you can search forums for such upgrades on your particular notebook.
For the Lenovo G580 you just have to remove the bottom cover which is secured by two screws and then you have to slide down to take the cover off. Refer to the picture below for illustration. A word of caution here is to see if any screws are covered with warranty stickers as some manufacturers might consider warranty ti be void if you remove certain panels. It is also a good idea to remove the battery before you do any maintenance/repair work on your machine. Use the sliding clips to remove the battery.
After you remove the back cover, you have access to pretty much everything. You can access hard drive, RAM sticks, the Wi-Fi card and the processor's heat-pipe as well. In this particular notebook we have 2 RAM slots at our disposal. We can just add our additional RAM module by sliding it in while inclined at 45 degrees and then pressing down on the raised edge.
Hard disk is easily removable by removing two screws and the holding bracket later on. Cooling fan is not accessible from this access-cover and you have to further remove the keyboard, display and the body shell as well. This might make it a bit tedious to do heatsink cleaning or thermal paste upgrades. It is usually recommended to blow air once in a a few months in the air outlet and inlets to avoid blockage/debris in the air flow passages.
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