RAM ? ASAP buying for birthday.

[Gribur]

Hello, new here and have an urgent question regarding RAM. I am a photographer and my laptop is used for heavy editing. It is an ASUS N550JV-DB71 with an i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.40GHz. Currently running 8gb of ram. My wife wants to buy me a Bday present and I definately need something to speed up my workflow. All I know is it is 204 pin and 1.35V DDR3. I have been researching and I keep getting lost in the maze of products. I am looking to spend around $150 and need to order by tommorow. I want the best suited , quickest ram possible for the system. Thanks in advance, I really apprecite any help. Cheers.

 

[Kursah]

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/N550JV/specifications/

According to the MFG, you can have up to 16GB of DDR3L 1600, 204-pin SO-DIMM. They don't mention if they are using both DIMM's or not...some have 2, most do... some have 4...not as many tho. Odds are you have two DIMM (RAM sockets) to use. If that is the case you are using 2x4GB, and you'll need a 2x8GB kit.

Looks like in a quick Google search I ran I found this thread, where a guy needed to update his firmware to be able to use 2x8GB.

Here is a Newegg RAM query looking at DDR3L 1600 SO-DIMM 2x8GB kits, I prefer G.Skill and Crucial, but any of those on that page should work just fine.

Good luck, happy birthday and welcome to TPU!

 

[Gribur]

Thanks for the help and happy bday, these ripjaw seem pretty popular think will try these, let me know if its a good one.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...ignorebbr=1&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

[kn00tcn]

are you for sure confirming that you fill up your 8gb & that programs start getting choppy? this is the only reason to increase ram capacity

the asus product page for that model says "DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM, DIMM Up to 16 G", so... you find ddr3l, the L is for low power (1.35v as you found out), at a size per stick at or below 16gb

what i dont get is why they dont actually write SODIMM aka 204pin, that's confusing... so if you say it's 204pin (did you open the laptop to look at the current stick?) then i guess it's SODIMM

if you're looking at that specific frequency, you may notice different ram sticks have different 'timings', generally condensed to a set of 3 numbers, the first of which has the greatest effect on performance, & that's why different sticks at the same freq will have wildly different prices... except ram performance doesnt translate into that big of a deal in real world performance

at $150, i wonder if an SSD is relevant to speeding up workflow

 

[Gribur]

are you for sure confirming that you fill up your 8gb & that programs start getting choppy? this is the only reason to increase ram capacity

the asus product page for that model says "DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM, DIMM Up to 16 G", so... you find ddr3l, the L is for low power (1.35v as you found out), at a size per stick at or below 16gb

what i dont get is why they dont actually write SODIMM aka 204pin, that's confusing... so if you say it's 204pin (did you open the laptop to look at the current stick?) then i guess it's SODIMM

if you're looking at that specific frequency, you may notice different ram sticks have different 'timings', generally condensed to a set of 3 numbers, the first of which has the greatest effect on performance, & that's why different sticks at the same freq will have wildly different prices... except ram performance doesnt translate into that big of a deal in real world performance

at $150, i wonder if an SSD is relevant to speeding up workflow

I run many programs at once when editing, I have had issues with programs shutting down, not rendering and overall poor performance especially with lightroom. I do know that many of my fellow photographers are running at least 16gb of ram. I have been told that 8 gb is barely enough to run the adobe products which I use. I did not open and look for the 204, I see what you mean by them just listing DIMM, so now I dont know? I was just assuming it would be SODIMM as it is laptop. Here is what crucial.com has listed as the top item to upgrade to 16gb on my laptop, this has me confused also. http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/n550jv/CT7765836 Check it out and let me know what you think. I am open to suggestions and ideas, I am just learning and taking cues from you guys, which I am thankful for.

Oh, it has a 7200rpm drive in it right now, now the quickest but I thought ram over that first, might be bad call, not sure.

 

[kn00tcn]

get a screwdriver & proceed with the steps needed to make a ram upgrade without replacing the current stick(s) to see what they are, or find a more technical pdf from asus

EDIT: actually maybe some software like cpuz, speccy, aida, or hwinfo might be able to identify the exact ram model to mostly confirm what size it is

open taskmanager & actually look at the usage hitting 7+gb

programs should NOT shut down, that is not normal or ram capacity related on a 'modern' OS... unless you're purposely disabling the pagefile or making it below 8gb

poor performance could be being a mobile cpu, lack of gpu acceleration, etc... so what happens if you're still sluggish after the upgrade, only reducing freezes?

EDIT2: i find 'presents' like these (individual random component) so weird... they're not personal, they're chosen under stress, they're something you can afford to do on your own, what's the point of ONLY ram being a present?

on top of that photography equipment is so much more relatively expensive.... yet having a sweet $150 tripod sounds like a much better idea than ram

spend that $150 to go indoor skydiving with your wife with a third person making a video of it

EDIT3: i've never actually used an SSD so even i'm not sure about the extent of it helping with workflow