Will windows 10 run OK with 4GB ram

Golf1.6 · 31 Aug 2016 at 11:41

Hi

I have a reall old laptop that I need to get to decent working order for someone. It has VISTA so I thought I'd install windows 10 on it.

It uses DDR2-800 ram and a pair of 4GB sticks (8GB total) will set me back close to £100.

Even on ebay they are expensive. The laptop is quite old so there isn't point throwing money at it. I got a very decent E6230 laptop with DDR3, USB 3 etc for just £150. (came with 1x4GB ram and I just bought a matching ram stick from ebay for <£15).

So it's definately not worth throwing money at but I suppose a SSD is a good investment as it would be carried over to another laptop used in future.

Question, windows 10 on just 4GB ram, doable?

Nothing heavy just probably used to play micecraft or something

Confused Stu · 31 Aug 2016 at 12:45

Short version - yes. My experience is Windows 10 scales pretty well with hardware. My tablet (Chuwi Hi10) runs an Intel Atom (Z8300) with 4GB of RAM and it happily runs web browsing, email, basic word processing and anything else I ask of it. It even ran the Heaven Benchmark without melting/blowing up!

Everyone's usage is different, but provided your realistic it'll be fine. Both my nieces bought the same laptops (2nd gen i3 + 4GB RAM) and one runs fine whereas the other keeps having issues with things crashing/running slow. The first one has no programs running at startup and never runs more than 2 tabs in Chrome, where the second one has Skype, Facebook, Spotify, and several other things running at startup.

bledd · 31 Aug 2016 at 12:51

SSD is the most vital component. 4GB is what I'd consider the minimum amount of ram you want for a 64Bit Windows OS.

Griff7520 · 31 Aug 2016 at 13:03

I am running w10 64 BIT on a Q9550 775 socket with 4gb ram and it runs really well.

Golf1.6 · 31 Aug 2016 at 13:47

so stupid of me, just literally built a cheap q6600 system for another relative with 4Gb ram running windows 10 and its perfect.

markweatherill · 31 Aug 2016 at 15:22

I have two tablets with Windows 10; a Linx 10 with 2GB and it runs just fine. My cheap tablet with 1GB also runs surprisingly well.

RAM is not going to be the bottleneck!

jpaul · 31 Aug 2016 at 15:48

potentially first check you can get win 10 compatible graphics&other drivers
( friend has an old dell d600 with intel 915gm and do not think that has an update)

Jamauk · 31 Aug 2016 at 16:14

I've got an old HP laptop with an Intel U2300 @ 1.2Ghz, 3GB Ram & 128GB SSD. Runs Windows 10 surprisingly well considering its age. I haven't tried using it on anything requiring huge processing power, but its fairly responsive.