Upgrading RAM, need pointers.

I have a stick of RAM to upgrade my Alienware 18 with and I was wondering if any of you could give me some pointers as I am a little less than confident in taking the keyboard cover off (to put the ram in). I went out to FRYs and purchased an anti-static wrist strap with grounding wire to make sure I don't fry my computer with static. One question I have is do I have to bother removing the battery from the bottom? Can anyone that has put sticks of RAM on the top under the keyboard give me a step by step procedure on how to do this?

Thanks for any tips, advise or help.

 

Yes when disassembling any laptop you must remove the battery. Mr Fox I believe has a tear down video of getting to where you need to be and the New 18's are a little different from the M18x R2's and R1's. Honestly I don't use a anti-static wrist wrap or anything anti-static really, it's all about how careful you are. Ram upgrade is fairly straight forward just make sure you have bought the proper ram. Currently the only ram you can buy for 18's is DDR3L that runs at 1.35v so if you see a deal make sure to do the research before buying, we already had a few members on here confirm with the expense of a few hundred dollars finding out the hard way. By my knowledge right now the safest ram to buy for the new 18 and not worry about it not working is the new Corsair Vengeance kit that does 2133mhz at 1.35v but I am unsure if the 18 can actually run at 2133 but I have seen some rumors around that a few have successfully gotten their 18's at 2133mhz on ram.

The Corsair Vengeance 2133 1.35v Ram 16gb kit. (Really pricey though...$179-199)
Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance Performance 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 2133 Laptop Memory Model CMSX16GX3M2B2133C11

 

You have only one stick of RAM? If that's the case, even if it's the correct memory, I would not install one stick in an open slot. That will likely put the memory into a slower single-channel mode and may defeat the purpose of adding it. You also need to know if you have 2 x 4GB sticks or 4 x 2GB sticks right now, because if you have the latter there is no place to install more RAM. Whatever you land on with memory, bear in mind that the fastest the system will run, regardless of what kind of RAM you install, is the speed of the weakest link. Avoid mixing up memory with different specs for that reason. For example, if you added 2 sticks of 2133 to a system with 2 sticks of 1600 installed, the system would run at 1600. The speed capacity of the 2133 will be totally meaningless in that scenario? However, depending on how you use the system, the increased capacity might serve a valid purpose in spite of the crippled clock speed.

 

I agree with Mr. Fox, it would be good to know the current setup you have so we can have a clear idea.

 

I have two sticks of RAM 4 gigs each, all the sticks including the new 8gig one are 1600mghz. Does that tell you what you need to know?

 

Move the two 4GB sticks to the slots under the palm rest if they are not already there. That will give you two easily accessed DIMM slots under the bottom cover. Be aware that installing just one RAM stick in one of those open slots may put your machine into single-channel memory mode and doing so may slow things down quite a bit. Feel free to test it and see how it goes. It will be really easy to try it to find out with open slots under the bottom cover once the two 4GB sticks are populating the DIMM slots under the keyboard. Unless you need more RAM for running virtual machines or RAM caching, might be better off just leaving it as is. Adding one 8GB 1600MHz stick isn't going to improve performance even if it doesn't cause the machine to slow down to single-channel mode.

 

I am going to purchase another stick of 8gb ram for the 18 and put both on the bottom. Thanks for your help and comments

 

single channel memory vs DDR
=
5% slower.

Highend memory is a classic myth that many games waste money on. 1600mhz vs 2133mhz gains 1-2% performance.

The main issue in this case:
Do OP need more memory?
If they dont know: Start taskmaster in Windows and check performance monitor. Does the computer use a swap file? How much real free memory is there? How much is used for cache?

For gaming 6 gig is enough. That is real world stuff not "stat" staff.

Windows have a really poor memory management compared to *nix style OSes. Beyond 8 gig just for gaming won't give any performance benefits. (and I assume people use 64bit OS/CPU. Remember that most games are still 32bit today even if more and more are moving to 64bit thanks to PS4/Xbone. Just 24 years after *nix had 64bit)

You only have 3 DIMM slots with a i7 2600? Not 4?
Using 3 sticks on a dual DDR system will make the memory use single lane mode. We talk a performance hit under 5%.

But going from 8 gig to 16 gig will give you zero gain if you are gaming. With virtual machines, databases and stuff like that = memory is good. Othervise 8 to 16 is just a waste in windows.

With 16 gig = turn of harddisk swap. It will speed up things unless the computer needs more than 16 gig. If it needs more then 16 gig = out of memory . Windows is so crappy that even if you have 6 gig free memory Bill will start to page out stuff to the disk.

My answer above is a real world answer as a computer science major who understands how IF/AND/OR gates.

 

1% loss = unacceptable

me = benching fan

2133 vs 1866 vs 1600 = no meaningful change in normal daily user experience (productivity, playing games, etc)

2133 vs 1866 vs 1600 = roughly 1,000 physics points in 3DMark11 :yes:

1 point less = losing to someone with 1 point more

Having information is power and I agree with most of your observations. There are two things in life that we can count on: death, and taxes. Nobody likes either of them unless they are sick in the head. Sometimes just having fun is more important than anything else.

It's definitely OK to have 32GB of 2133 at CL10 for no reason other than wanting to, knowing that you do and being happy about it.

 

You can get tighter timings with two sticks usually though

 

Yes, this is often true. Fortunately, in my case the tightest stable timings for two sticks also work equally well for 4 sticks except for command rate, which is 2T with four sticks, 1T with two. This makes sense because the memory controller needs more time to look at twice as many memory modules per channel during POST. The good news is that memory benchmark results are the same with four sticks and command rate doesn't matter after the initial fetch and chip selection by the memory controller is complete.

 

Quad channel means I get 4 sticks at one per channel but my modules were happy with 4x4 at 1t in a dual channel setup too but they are only 4gb.

 

I heard that if you do allot of multi-tasking that getting more RAM (16GIGs) was a good thing. Is this indeed true?