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Upgrading Ram/SSD of M15 GU502LV

AlWakRa
Level 7
Hello there,

A new owner of Asus Zephyrus M15 GU502LV with i7-10750h and rtx 2060. It has 16 GB ram on board, specs stats it is 3200mhz but the system reports 2933mhz, this isn't my main issue, I am planning to upgrade my ram with 32GB module to help in video editing, after searching I found Crucial and Kingston, Crucial doesn't specify if their speed is xmp or jedec, Kingston on other hand are specific about that, so most probably I am taking Kingston, but I want to know if anybody tried them, looking at HX432S20IB/32 or HX429S17IB/32, 3200mhz and 2933mhz respectively, will I gain any performance with 3200mhz? knowing Ryzen cpus supports it, where Intel are only 2933.

Second part, I was lucky to get my laptop with one ssd, which means other slot isn't populated, I want to get another ssd but I want to know the speeds it supports, are both slots x4? I am thinking of getting 2tb hp ex950 or xpg 8200 pro, they seems to be priced well and performs on par with Samsung ssd, only exception is Pro series.

Appreciate your inputs.
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7 REPLIES 7

Zero_Tyranos
Level 7
For the RAM questions, review in the Asus support site for your machine if there’s any BIOS update, it seems that for the M15 there is one to enable 3200mhz speed by default, but currently they mention that this can be enabled on the BIOS settings manually.

Also, if you plan to upgrade consider to check is how to mantain dual channel with the soldered RAM, AFAIK you need to match the amount and speed of the soldered one to keep but not sure about that. *

Another thing I would like to ask you (I’m interested in buying one and there’s almost no info available about upgrades yet), is the following:

*Did you found a free RAM slot or it was already occupied? I’ve read that these machines have an amount of soldered RAM, but no info if trhey also come with a stick to get to the advertised number

*Did you found a free m.2 slot for the SSD and there’s no soldered ssd (apple style) right?

For the ssd question, maybe your best bet is checking the manual or researching the one that comes with it to figure that out

Thanks for replying, I checked the bios and didn't find any option for Ram, but I think it got updated since last time I checked.

About dual channel support, I am a little lost here as I read from some the first 8gb will act as dual channel where the rest will be additional, don't know how true it is.

As for your question, it is a gamble to be honest, this is one part that Asus isn't consistent with, I hoped they have a build option to get exactly the specs I want, I got mine from Bestbuy and it came with 2 Ram modules (one soldered) and one ssd intalled. I saw some photos have 2 ssds in raid 0 mode, some others have only one 16gb module installed soldered and the other slot is empty. I don't know why they do that, where they advertise (up to 48GB), but in my case the most will be 40GB.

SSD isn't soldered, as I said I have only one installed, I thought of either only occupy the free slot, or going the extra mile of getting two 2tb nvme and do a raid 0 to get a total of 4tb, this way I wouldn't worry about space at all with all the photos and videos I take, and also games will not eat up the space quickly.

Blake1
Level 10
Hello AlWakRa,
I'm sorry that for the BIOS update to enable 3200MHz, it support the i7-10875H version only. i7-10750H one does not.
And yes, both M.2 slot can support PCIE 3X4, but we are not sure about 2TB.
We have only tried 512GB+512GB, or single 1TB.
Thank you.

Thank you Blake for your response, appreciate that, I just re-opened the official site to check the specs, and I stand corrected, it is mentioned, although not in the spec page, only when you read the full feature page, I am being specific to US website.

So, this settle the ram question, I will be going with 2933 and save few bucks, but could you inform me about dual channel support with different sizes of ram?

As for storage, I don't see any reason for the laptop to not work with any bigger SSDs, I saw a company called HIDevolution which sell modified laptops and they have Asus laptops with up to 8 tb storage.


Also, I would like to know why this exact model isn't that widely available in the market, I was trying to see if I can find the same specs but with rtx 2070, but it comes with different display, I priorities the 4k panel over gpu for my photo and video editing, as I want an accurate color reproduction. The S15 model only comes with 300hz screen, so this was out of my choices. I wished if you had a build system so I can choose the specs I wanted.

Blake1
Level 10
Hello AlWakRa,
If you would like to run dual channel, please kindly install 2 RAM in same size.
You may install the 2TB SSD, but we can not guarantee the compatibility and performance, just to let you know.
Thank you for your feedback on our marketing.

An update:

I bought 2x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme ssd, installed both and they are working. I had a problem with the empty ssd slot, as the screw itself was damaged and it was a pain to be able to remove it for ssd installation.

I set them with a raid array using Intel RST option in bios, but it turned out to not having any advantage in sequential speed (maybe hardware limitation), so this is disappointing, also Samsung suit doesn't work on this mode, it needs to be AHCI mode, so I am thinking of reverting them to standalone drives as it is easier to reinstall everything if I didn't use the pc until now, and use AHCI mode for them.

I am answering directly as it seems direct support is lacking here...

Basically i7-10750H and i7-10850H support up to 2933MHz memory so you can use 3200MHz memory sticks but it will run at 2933MHz.
Regarding the memory slots, you have one soldered memory slot on the main board and one available at the backside of your laptop, however, because you have 16GB as 2x8GB in dual channel mode, removing the 8GB for more memory will disable dual channel mode and will decrease the memory bandwidth at the end. Consequently, except the case you need a large amount of memory, you should avoid to do so, especially for gaming where speed is crucial.

Hope it helps!