Would more RAM speed my laptop up?

MouthBoy · 21 Feb 2014 at 21:47

Howdy all,

I have a HP Compaq 8510p. The spec is a Dual-core 2.2Ghz Centrino, 2gb RAM and a HD2600. Its obviously not the fastest thing in the world but for some reason it just seems a lot slower then it should.

I thought the HDD wasn't helping it so tonight I replaced the old (and dying) 120gb with a 500gb WD Blue, but it still seems so slow. Its just updating Windows 7 64bit now and its just capping out the RAM all the time. Its taken almost 2 hours to install 136 updates.

So, do you think upgrading to 4gb of RAM would help me out or do you think that its not really going to give me the performance boost I'm looking for? I use the laptop for Office, browsing web, front end web development and sometimes for watching films in bed. Not a big ask for it I know but when it hates to multitask it gets annoying.

So whats your thoughts?

TL;DR: Should I upgrade my RAM in my laptop or not?

CEUOTC · 21 Feb 2014 at 22:13

As long as it can take it then yes you will see an improvement, you could also look to swapping the hdd for a SSHD (Hybrid HDD) or an SSD.

CEUOTC · 21 Feb 2014 at 22:18

Looks like it needs DDR2 Soddim which unless you can find cheap, is well, not cheap.

MouthBoy · 21 Feb 2014 at 22:24

CEUOTC said:
As long as it can take it then yes you will see an improvement, you could also look to swapping the hdd for a SSHD (Hybrid HDD) or an SSD.

Yep it will take up to 4gb. I was tempted to take my 60gb SSD out of my main rig and just use my 512gb SSD for windows and games, rather then just games, but I still felt that the RAM would cap performance.

CEUOTC said:
Looks like it needs DDR2 Soddim which unless you can find cheap, is well, not cheap.

I can get 2x2gb for £40 new but as you stated, thats not cheap for 4gb.