PC slower after RAM upgrade from 8GB to 16GB

My Laptop PC was running smooth and all was well, but I needed more ram for the video editing and very large image files I edit so I upgraded to 16GB with 2 sticks rather than 4 so that I could run it at 1600mHz. I upgraded because my OC was sluggish while rendering a video or batch processing images and I wanted to be able to surf the web while waiting for it to finish.
After the upgrade, my PC is slow even as I type now and I only have one window open with nothing else running. Something is not right and I'm hoping to figure it out. I recently reformatted my SSD and turned off as many startup apps as possible. My SSD has 158GB free. I ran memtest all night with no errors.

The RAM is installed in the slots under the keyboard.

I have done everything I can think of and troubleshot this like crazy, but nothing is working. I did all the typical SSD tweaks for windows, so it's not that. One other thing, my PC uses 3GB of RAM right after boot up, but the performance monitor doesn't seem to show enough things to be taking up that much RAM. I reduced my page file to 800MB, turned off indexing, enabled write cache and such...

What is going on here?

I'll attach screenshots of CPUz and System Info for the RAM since that's the only thing that changed before my PC started slowing down. Also, it mostly acts sluggish on the web, doesn't matter which browser, but seems to be worse with Firefox.

All help and advice will be greatly appreciated.

My Sager np8150 (Clevo P150hm) Laptop Specs:

CPU: Intel i7 2630QM
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 460M
RAM: 16GB (2 x 8GB) 1600mHz Kingston HyperX
Chipset: HM65
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Screen Resolution: 1920x1080 (95% Color Gamut)

System Summary by Kazmer81 posted Aug 24, 2015 at 11:10 AM

CPUz_Memory by Kazmer81 posted Aug 24, 2015 at 11:10 AM

Slot1 by Kazmer81 posted Aug 24, 2015 at 11:10 AM

Slot2 by Kazmer81 posted Aug 24, 2015 at 11:10 AM

 

Kazmer81, did you update BIOS to latest version?

 

Faulty RAM is also a possibility. Try it with only a single 8 GB SODIMM, then try the other one, see if one is causing things to slow down.

 

I have not yet done a BIOS update. That is something I have been putting off for a long time. I'm worried it might brick my laptop. I have a Sager, but I bought it second hand and worry that it has the Clevo BIOS and I've read that you cant go from Clevo BIOS to Sager, so I'm not entirely sure which BIOS to update to. How can I tell if I have the Sager or Clevo BIOS?

Thank you for the replies. I will run memtest again tonight.

 

When you reformatted, you installed all the needed drivers, right?

 

Yes, of course. I do know what I'm doing and I've done just about everything I can think of.

The other reason I have not yet updated BIOS is because I haven't seen anything in the notes about the updates fixing RAM issues. I contacted Sager to get the right BIOS update. For now, I will continue by trying anything mentioned here.

Any other ideas?

 

I am not sure of the wiring but I do not think it will properly control in #2 and #4 for dual channel, try for slots #1  or #3 & #4.

 

I was thinking that too, but it's in the two slots beneath the keyboard and from reading through forums, those seem to be the slots of choice when using only two sticks. If I were to put it in slots #1 and #2, there would be one stick on each side of the motherboard. And again, it was working fine when I have the 8GB in these same two slots. Also, when I put the old RAM back in, it was working fine again. This may end up being an unsolved mystery. I'm starting to think it's just the RAM.

BTW, I did the BIOS mod, and it didn't do much for me if anything.

Thank you for all of your help, I do appreciate it.

 

Running a 7+ year old O/S and expecting it to perform at 2015.75 spec's is not how you get the most out of your hardware.

I would suggest you upgrade to Win10x64Pro (even Win8.1 Update 1 is a huge upgrade over Win7...).

Good luck.

 

Also Windows 7 came out less than 6 years ago (10/22/09), so you're bad at math too.

 

I was thinking along those same lines. I've been reluctant to change for a while since I despise Windows 8, but Windows 10 is supposed to be alot better with the aspects I hated so much.

I may have figured out what went wrong. I have been using the Rapid mode with my SSD and now that I turned it off, my PC is actually running faster. I didn't realize that RAPID mode uses 1.5GB of RAM. My boot time is about 15 seconds, much faster than the 25 second boot I had with RAPID mode.

As far as updating to W10, should I do a clean install or just update it with the free windows upgrade?

Thank you for all your help!

 

Actually, Win7 was being developed for forever, but I just started the 'clock' when I started using the Milestone 1 version sometime in 2008. You may be 'good' at arithmetic, but math is not your forte either.

To be clear; I think that it is much, much older in tech terms. It was loosely based on circa 2000 era ideas and really, just a polishing up of Vista anyways...

But either way, I'm good (at math) and Win7x64Pro today? Not so much.

 

Yeah; you finally discovered that RAPID is crap.

To get Win10 for free, you need to do an upgrade over your existing O/S, first.

But afterwards, I would recommend a clean install anyways.

See:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10


I would suggest you follow that link and download the Win10 64bit version (Home, Pro, etc.) of the Windows version you currently have. Create a USB drive as instructed (I also saved the ISO too... so I had to run the tool twice) I would use the largest USB drive you have (for drivers, etc.).

After you have created the USB drive and tested booting with it... do the upgrade to Win10. (If you think you might want to go back 'properly' to the O/S you're using now... clone your system to a spare drive and do the 'upgrade' on the clone...).

After fully testing it after it has installed and you have fully explored it and applied any further updates and drivers as needed, I would then backup my files, completely wipe the SSD and do a clean install with the USB key you created originally (and one you can also use as an emergency startup disk too).

Make sure you click 'skip' each time (2x) it asks for the Win10 'key'. As soon as you connect to the internet the first time, it will be activated and ready to use.

Hope this helps.