The RAM is ~$100 on Newegg for 16 (2x8) GB from Corsair, good quality RAM, from what I understand. Definitely worth it. I have 16 GB (4x4 GB--I have i7), and I have used most of it. If you do multiple VM's, 6-8 GB simply woll not cut it. Toying (a little) with the idea of upping to 32 GB--when its ~$100 for 32 (4x8) GB. That, and a big SSD would make my G53SX scream!

Where did you find the i5 variant--I have never really heard of it. Before buying the G53SX, I looked at a bunch of variants (ASUS, you are worse than Microsoft at releasing 10^6 variants of the same product, 3-4 should be sufficient.), but never found the i5 in stores. What is the battery life like, I can get ~3 hrs of light CAD usage out of mine, with the screen dimmed down as far as it can go and the WiFi off--WiFi takes a load of power.

I bought it on a french website called "Materiel net", It was hard for me to choose as well, but this one got special deal (900€ in december 2011) which greatly helped my choice 🙂

Tried once to just spend the battery while playing BF3 on WIFI with the screen dimmed as low as it could go and I did get an okay-ish 1h30 of play time.

About the RAM, I would still like confirmation that my G53SX-sx116v (i5) can take those "8Gigs single slot" as I have only 2 slots in the machine and the manual states a maximum of 8gigs altogether.....

I would assume so, but the only way to learn is to order the RAM and find out:cool:. The i7 variants are only certified to 16 (4x4) GB, but as you can see from poking around the forums, quite a number of people have used 4x8 (32) GB, which is twice the rated capacity. Considering that when ASUS launched the G53SX, 8 GB RAM modules were $400-$800 apiece, it is unsurprising that they did not bother to certify that it would run. The 8 (2x4) GB RAM upgrade is $35-$50, so even paying a restocking fee it is no more than $50-$75 to try.

Please do so, I am interested to know how an i5 handles high capacity RAM modules. It cannot be the IMC (integrated memory controller), since the macbook pro 13 uses it as well, and a number of people run the i5 variant with 16 (2x8) GB of RAM.

That is pretty good for a gaming laptop, and that deal was quite impressive. Almost as good as the deals we have in the US. For gaming, from what I understand, an i5 is virtually as good as an i7, the difference only becomes noticeable if you run multiple VM's at the same time. Then, having 4 (8) processor cores makes a huge difference. Which variant of the i5 specifically do you have? I assume that it is something like a 2520M?

Thank you for the input.

It's the i5 2430M (2.4gh and 2.9gh with the "turbo")

So all that's left is to try it out myself and find out and then report back 🙂
Give it a week, I should have at least 1 of those 8gb RAM inside the lappy to test as I will already be far above the manual's stated maximum of 8gb with 12gb.

About he laptop, I'mvery satisfied until now. Good for gaming and running 'toshop easily for those very high rez pictures, I love it..... apart from the weight 🙂
The extra RAM should top it all off nicely, shame there are only 2 slots

As I recall, the IMC on the i3/i5/i7 (dual-core) processors was limited to running 2-slots worth of RAM. The quad-slot system are not quad-channel, ASUS simply multi-plexed the channels in order to make each of them address 2 slots worth of memory. By having 4 slots, I do not gain any performance (8.4 WEI RAM in Windows 8), solely cheaper and more capacious upgrades.

I have the 2630QM, so my system is 2.00 GHz and 2.9 turbo. It can run all 4 (8) cores at 2.4-2.6 GHz, when turbo mode is active, making the computer incredibly fast.