PC RAM

[wheeler]

Have to say I disagree and I would recommend a single stick of memory. That way if you decide to upgrade to even more memory you'll have an empty slot ready and you won't have to discard the two sticks if you go the other route.

This is my thinking on it too, means i can also throw the 4gb one in too & if it works then bonus, if not then take it back out.

[Armidillo]

I've got a sizeable extended family just up the road from you Alec (in oz terms ) in and around Brisbane.

That'd be too hot for me! Much better climate here in the New England region (3200 feet above sea level).

[Paul-R]

The memory management hardware that Lenovo use on their laptops will handle mismatched memory, and I have had brand new laptops from Lenovo fitted with 4+2 and 8+4 GB.

How very unusual, I didn't know that.

You lose nothing by trying anyway.

Very true.

[wheeler]

So stuck an 8gb stick in & the PC recognised the 12gb in total. Definitely a massive notable difference, crucial says I can go up to 16 gb so might get another 8gb stick to replace the 4gb one.

[moizeau]

Unless you've got a very high end laptop you probably won't see any further gains increasing ram further, the bottleneck will have moved. You can check this in 'Task Manager' the click on 'performance'. This page will show you how much Ram, CPU is being used.

[Paul-R]

My next move after doubling the RAM to 8GB in my laptop was to change the spinning discs hard drive for a SSD. That really had a quite noticeable effect on boot-up time and general responsiveness. I might go to 16GB next or, just possibly, change the CPU if it isn't soldered to the motherboard.

When I did this some ten years ago on my then laptop I changed from a 1.5GHz Celeron to a 1.7GHz Pentium M and that made quite a big difference. Theoretically there is an upgrade path for the processor which I researched a few years ago. That had something like a 90% chance of working - not soldered to the motherboard permitting.