Laptop RAM upgrade (stick with the same type or go faster)

demonix · 25 Feb 2015 at 17:15

I had decided a while ago to upgrade the RAM in my laptop since only having 2GB doesn't really cut it with what I'm doing now (along with the fact that 256MB is allocated to the GPU), but I wasn't too sure what to do and now that I'm going to be going ahead with this part of the upgrade in the near future I want to get all of my issues sorted before I purchase anything.

The laptop has pc3-8500 (1066MHz) RAM, but when I checked with the crucial advisor at the time it suggested pc3-10600 RAM and now it's suggesting pc3-12800 RAM.

So the question is can I use faster RAM like the crucial advisor has suggested, or should I stick with the same type that is already used in it?

The laptop in question is an Acer Aspire 5551

RJC · 25 Feb 2015 at 18:35

You can try the faster ram, but depends on price as I am not sure what the max speed the motherboard / system can take.

demonix · 26 Feb 2015 at 16:30

It didn't suggest pc3-14900 or pc3-17066, so it's likely that pc3-12800 is the fastest it can support but I was either going to stick with pc3-8500 (having two modules instead of just one would most likely speed things up) or go up to pc3-10600 depending on how trustworthy the information provided by the advisor on the crucial is.

Admetos · 9 Mar 2015 at 00:22

If your adding another 2GB (to match the first 2GB), then just pick the same speed memory.

However if your upgrading to 8GB (2 x 4GB) and replacing the 2GB, then buy the faster RAM. Faster memory will help the shared GPU memory, but how much hard to say. Just by adding paired memory will double your memory speed as your going from single channel to dual channel.

Meaker · 9 Mar 2015 at 23:44

It's nice to list specs so you are not forcing people to go look it up as even as a notebook enthusiast I don't know what the acer 5551 is off the top of my head.

Look at is you can either have an athlon X2 or a phenom II X3 which impacts what your maximum supported speed is.

X2 = 1066mhz
x3 = 1333mhz

Please in future provide more details when asking for support, especially when asking for help with upgrades.