RAM Upgrade advice for Alienware

abdb687

abdb687

abdb687

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Hi everyone,

When I was younger I used to upgrade my PCs all the time. It's been about 10 years since I have!

Last year I bought an Alienware 15 R4. In the description of the order, the RAM component reads:

370-ACRZ
8GB, DDR4, 2400MHz; up to 32GB (additional memory sold separately)

I want to upgrade to the maximum 32GB of course.

I understand that when it comes to Alienware laptops, some of the components are the PC versions. It's more like a flat PC than a normal laptop. The video card, for example is NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 OC with 6GB GDDR5, which does not appear to be any different from the version you'd get off the shelf for a PC. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Anyway, my point is, when looking to upgrade my RAM, lots of guides say if you're using a laptop you need special tiny RAM.

For my Alienware, I really can't tell. I don't know exctly which brand I have. I'm going to replace them, of course, so they don't need to be the same brand of what I have.

I'd like advice on exactly which RAM to buy.

Any help is appreciated.
 
Why do you want 32GB RAM? Do you use your laptop for anything other than gaming? If not then 32GB is a waste of money, 16GB would be a better/cheaper investment atm.

Laptops use SO-DIMM RAM - yours has 2 slots I believe @ DDR4-2666

You can get a 16GB kit from OcUK for £79.99 - here

Or if you really want 32GB then again OcUK sell one for £158.99 - here
 
Thanks very much for your help!

Sparx said:
Why do you want 32GB RAM? Do you use your laptop for anything other than gaming? If not then 32GB is a waste of money, 16GB would be a better/cheaper investment atm.
Click to expand...

You're probably right. It's very likely that I am wasting some of my money. That being said, there are a couple of reasons why I choose 32gb.

I play a lot of games which are in alpha or beta, and not optimised. These tend to require at least 8gb available RAM. When running at 8gb that I currently have, I find that I only have 4 available most of the time using Windows 10. I've gone through numerous hoops in an effort to reduce the usage on my RAM (e.g. running debloater, removing everything from startup, stopping all the processes I feel are safe to stop).

What that means is that even running stripped down I need a minimum 12gb, and at 16 would likely never crash while running stripped down.

I would like to be more carefree, though. So, I like to run a whole bunch of internet browser windows, media, or other programmes in the background while playing games that are also demanding.

I also like to be able to rule out the 'not enough RAM' option when identifying problems in games. Even if this would never be a problem with 16gb there would likely be someone on a forum saying 'oh well if you have more RAM you'd be fine etc etc'. Even if that's silly, I'd like to rule that out in the minds of others by just having as much RAM as possible. I don't mind spending a little extra to make sure.
 
You need to forget about being anal on reducing your RAM usage - when Windows 10 was released, there was a common misconception that it used too much RAM. You seem to have that mentality in your head still - stop! :p

When in reality, it was actually using RAM much MORE efficiently, the fact it's using your available RAM is a good thing. Having 4GB free of 8GB is perfectly normal, Windows learns and scales to caches programs/apps much better than older Windows.

Moving to 32GB would be a complete waste, 16GB would be more than optimum enough for you IMO. But your money, spend how you please :D
 
Sparx said:
You need to forget about being anal on reducing your RAM usage - when Windows 10 was released, there was a common misconception that it used too much RAM. You seem to have that mentality in your head still - stop! :p

When in reality, it was actually using RAM much MORE efficiently, the fact it's using your available RAM is a good thing. Having 4GB free of 8GB is perfectly normal, Windows learns and scales to caches programs/apps much better than older Windows.

Moving to 32GB would be a complete waste, 16GB would be more than optimum enough for you IMO. But your money, spend how you please :D
Click to expand...


Thanks for the advice. It's nice to be able to save some money. If there's literally no reason to have 32gb then I won't go that way with it.

In the end, though, the machine supports the amount. I wonder if/when the amount will be useful.
 
It'll be another few years if not longer, before I can see 32GB being remotely useful for gaming :)

But no one has a crystal ball, what the majority at least know right now, is 32GB is a waste for gaming and the near future.
 
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