Is it worth increasing RAM in my laptop?

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I have a Lenovo ideapad 320 laptop with the following specs:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 7200U @ 2.50GHz 41 °C
Kaby Lake-U/Y 14nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 665MHz (10-10-10-28)
Motherboard
LENOVO LNVNB161216 (U3E1)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 620 (Lenovo)
4096MB ATI AMD Radeon 530 (Lenovo)
CrossFire Disabled
Storage
931GB Seagate ST1000LM035-1RK172 (SATA ) 45 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I use emulator like LDPlayer/BlueStacks for Android games & also Android Studio, & occasionally play PC games. Will increasing RAM on this laptop make it better? How much RAM should I increase?

W

Open task manager & click on more details. Then do all the tasks you do usually on laptop & check ram consumption. If it exceeds 70% & stay there often then you need extra ram else not.

I just noticed you don't have a ssd. Get ssd which will improve your laptop performance much more than adding ram.

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whitestar_999 said:
Open task manager & click on more details. Then do all the tasks you do usually on laptop & check ram consumption. If it exceeds 70% & stay there often then you need extra ram else not.

I just noticed you don't have a ssd. Get ssd which will improve your laptop performance much more than adding ram.

When I use browser alone RAM usage is 68% & no SSD as of now. My laptop already has 1 TB HDD. Do you mean to replace this with SSD or is it possible to add additional SSD along with existing HDD? Also my laptop has original Windows 10 Home activated preinstalled. Should the OS be moved to the SSD & how to activate it?

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soorajdigit said:
When I use browser alone RAM usage is 68% & no SSD as of now. My laptop already has 1 TB HDD. Do you mean to replace this with SSD or is it possible to add additional SSD along with existing HDD? Also my laptop has original Windows 10 Home activated preinstalled. Should the OS be moved to the SSD & how to activate it?

Post a screenshot of your task manager showing all processes. Your laptop does not have additional space for ssd upgrade so you need to replace hdd with ssd. As for win 10 pre-installed its activation info is already saved on Microsoft servers so as long as your laptop motherboard & processor is not changed it doesn't matter whether you upgrade to ssd or increase the ram & when you reinstall win 10 you just need to connect to net & within 5 min the win 10 will be automatically reactivated. You can use software to copy win 10 installation from hdd to ssd.

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whitestar_999 said:
Post a screenshot of your task manager showing all processes. Your laptop does not have additional space for ssd upgrade so you need to replace hdd with ssd. As for win 10 pre-installed its activation info is already saved on Microsoft servers so as long as your laptop motherboard & processor is not changed it doesn't matter whether you upgrade to ssd or increase the ram & when you reinstall win 10 you just need to connect to net & within 5 min the win 10 will be automatically reactivated. You can use software to copy win 10 installation from hdd to ssd.

Replacing with SSD is difficult for now considering it's high cost. So the question is whether it is worth increasing RAM? What about Readyboost?

What's the ram usage after restart with no extra programs running in background? Post screenshot of Startup tab in task manager as well.

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SaiyanGoku said:
What's the ram usage after restart with no extra programs running in background? Post screenshot of Startup tab in task manager as well.

W

That is startup programs list which is fine but also post the pic of performance tab showing ram usage after restart just like the 1st pic.

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whitestar_999 said:
That is startup programs list which is fine but also post the pic of performance tab showing ram usage after restart just like the 1st pic.

Mine uses ~3 GB ram on startup as well. You should upgrade to ssd before increasing ram.

W

You can see your disk usage hovering around 80% in above pic. I also think upgrading to ssd will be better than upgrading ram.

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whitestar_999 said:
You can see your disk usage hovering around 80% in above pic. I also think upgrading to ssd will be better than upgrading ram.

Hi, I can you explain more about how upgrading to SSD will be better than upgrading RAM?

soorajdigit said:
Hi, I can you explain more about how upgrading to SSD will be better than upgrading RAM?

8 GB ram is adequate for your usage. My office laptop has 16GB ram but still lags/hangs randomly because of slow HDD and windows system tasks which keep running in background.

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soorajdigit said:
Hi, I can you explain more about how upgrading to SSD will be better than upgrading RAM?

Everything on a pc is loaded from storage device(ssd/hdd) to ram & from there it is run so if storage device itself is slow then system will always run everything slow. If you have enough storage space but not enough ram then pc can also create & use a temporary ram like space on storage device but again if storage device is slow then this will further slow down the system. If you have a ssd with enough capacity but only 4gb ram then windows can create a temporary ram like space on ssd & use that along with ram to compensate for ram shortage & because ssd is much faster than hdd so this temporary space(called pagefile) performance will be much faster compared to pagefile on hdd.

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whitestar_999 said:
Everything on a pc is loaded from storage device(ssd/hdd) to ram & from there it is run so if storage device itself is slow then system will always run everything slow. If you have enough storage space but not enough ram then pc can also create & use a temporary ram like space on storage device but again if storage device is slow then this will further slow down the system. If you have a ssd with enough capacity but only 4gb ram then windows can create a temporary ram like space on ssd & use that along with ram to compensate for ram shortage & because ssd is much faster than hdd so this temporary space(called pagefile) performance will be much faster compared to pagefile on hdd.

So these seems to be the possible reasons high for HDD usage.

The HDD performance has reduced over usage. (My Laptop is nearly 2 years old) Is this possible within this lifespan
An HDD is not enough to handle heavy applications like emulator, android studio or games.
The 1st being the reason for 2nd.

As of now changing to SSD is difficult considering its high cost & also availability. So is there any tools,methods etc to speed up the HDD when it becomes slower?

soorajdigit said:
So is there any tools,methods etc to speed up the HDD when it becomes slower?

Intel made optane drives for this specific reason but the cost is just too high IMO. In fact, its cheaper to buy a good 240-512GB ssd than buying a 32GB optane module at current prices.

W

soorajdigit said:
So these seems to be the possible reasons high for HDD usage.

The HDD performance has reduced over usage. (My Laptop is nearly 2 years old) Is this possible within this lifespan

An HDD is not enough to handle heavy applications like emulator, android studio or games.

The 1st being the reason for 2nd.

As of now changing to SSD is difficult considering its high cost & also availability. So is there any tools,methods etc to speed up the HDD when it becomes slower?

1. No, hdd either works normally or starts failing with significant performance degrading.

2. HDD is not enough for anything, earlier people use hdd because there was no choice.

You can't tune a Maruti to become a Ferrari. In upcoming amazon prime day sale get some friend/relative with amazon prime acc & hdfc card to get a 240gb ssd(kingston A400 or crucial BX500) for ~2.5k.