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Simple question about G55 memory upgrade...

Eric_G55V
Level 7
1.) I was just wondering if anyone could suggest a website that doesn't rape you on the price of RAM for your G55 notebook.

I have a G55 VW and I just want to add another 8 gigs of RAM so here are some follow-up questions I have concerning this issue:

2.) Which philips screwdriver size am I going to need to remove the back panel on my notebook in order to add more RAM? I think it might be a philips .5 or it might be a 1. I don't know.

3.) How many different types of DDR3 RAM are there? Is it a confusing issue selecting the correct RAM for your machine?

Any help with this matter will be appreciated. Thanks.

-Eric

P.S.: I hope my large knobby fingers will be small enough to reach inside my computer to add more RAM! I use my computer for Photoshop and I'm really hoping the extra RAM will make a difference on speed.
My Asus notebook specs:
CPU
Intel Core i7 @ 2.30GHz 38 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW (SOCKET 0) 40 °C
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M
12,828 Views
21 REPLIES 21

UnAimed
Level 9
Hi Eric

Amazon usually offers great prices I would suggest taking a look there. I believe you will require a .0 or .1 Phillips screwdriver. Usually it's a good idea to get a Phillips screwdriver kit with all the different sizes because there will always be some use for them and they are relatively inexpensive.

I'm not quite sure about your RAM question but I will try to answer it the best I know. For your G55VW you must make sure that the ram is Dual Channel and that the timings are no higher than 9-9-9-24. This will always be listed under the specifications online as CL9. For example- "DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 CL9'' furthermore you want to make sure that it is running at 1600Mhz too. This is all to do with the fact that your G55VW will come with 4 RAM slots but only two are user accessible so you want to make sure that they will be at the same settings/speed for that reason or it will not work.

You can also access and change RAM from the other SO-DIMM slots too but doing so will void your warranty and will require you to disassemble the laptop. But don't worry, 2 SO-DIMM slots is plenty for upgrade purposes. You can easily add another 8-16 GB.

And last but not least a RAM upgrade should definitely aid in Photoshop speed.

For any more information I recommend that you take a look at this great guide MarshallR put together. It goes into great detail on how to upgrade including many great pictures.

http://rog.asus.com/111602012/g-series-laptops/g55vw-upgrade-guide/

bignazpwns
Level 11
www.newegg.com

Flat out timings dont mean crap. the most important spec is voltage. If you get some high voltage ram chances are it wont run stable at the stock voltage and there is no way to fix this on the G55 since it has not control for that.

Now you dont need to buy a dual channel kit. Hell you dont even need the same brand or speed or ram sticks. I shown that not only can you mix ram speeds and brands it also will run in dual channel. Example i ran 16 gigs of ram 8 of it was stock hynx one stick was a samsung ddr3 1600 and the other was a pny DDR3 1333 and useing intel XTU i was able to run the 1333 at 1600 and it all ran in dual channel. I did a big post on this put up screen shots and benchmarks.

Now your ram will always default to the slowest stick installed. You can get it to full speed with the intel XTU but you can mix the timing and its fine. Heck you can even run dual channel using a 2gig and a 4 gig stick. This has been around for years with intel.


Dont overthink it. People on here put more thought into that then they do about anything else here. And you dont need to just keep in mind this.

You wont get any gaming preformacne gain over DDR1333 vs DDR3 1600. Just how it is. Wont speed up your system nothing just make your benchmarks pretty. Anyone who tells you they got a 5fps gain from it is a liar and don't know how to benchmark You only gain preformance in games when using a igp that uses the system ram. Improve overall system preformance you will want sticks with lower timings and you wont be able to tell the diff. outside of a synthetic benchmark.

Going form 8-16gigs of memory will have no impact on your games what so ever. Most games wont even use more then 2-3 gigs of ram. However if you do 3D work with stuff like Mya or Cad or even heavy photoshop work 16gigs should be your min as those programs can eat up way more then 8gigs. I built a system for a guy who does cad and we went with a sandy bridge e for the 64gigs of ram because the work he did was using more then 32gig's but he was doing very heavy CAD for the auto industry and needed a pc at home that he could work on.

Vicodin
Level 10
Newegg.com is the cheapest. I would recommend going my route however. Here is what I did.

My Asus G55vw had 2x 4GB Hynix Ram Sticks. They are located under the keyboard area. The other two ports in the user accessible bay on the bottom of the laptop are empty. I wanted the RAM to match though. So I jumped on ebay and found the exact RAM that was pulled out of a Brand New Asus G55vw on an upgrade. I bought them for $35.00 and received what I ordered. Now I have 16gb of all matching ram. You want the timings to match up. So this is in my opinion the best way to go.

^ Seriously go this route.

Thanks Vicodin, bignazpwns, and Unaimed for your very useful posts! That's great that I received such quick replies from you guys. Now that a know a little more about the basics of adding RAM to your machine, the actual task doesn't seem so daunting any more.

Vicodin, I will seriously consider ordering from that exact link right now but I'm a little unsure of the size of the sticks in the picture on Ebay. It seems like they might be a bit too tall to fit inside a slim notebook like my G55. I haven't actually cracked open the panel and looked inside yet so I'm not sure how the RAM fits inside the case, but nevertheless, I'm still salivating over the possibility of order some more memory right now! Hahaha. <--I'm just laughing at my nerdy excitement over a purchase of a few sticks of plastic and silicone.

UnAimed, that was a very helpful post. Thanks for being the first to reply as well! Everyone is so helpful on this site, it's great!

-Eric
My Asus notebook specs:
CPU
Intel Core i7 @ 2.30GHz 38 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW (SOCKET 0) 40 °C
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M

Never mind my earlier concern regarding how the new memory would fit inside my case. After a tiny bit of research I figured out how the memory sticks are configured inside the case of the G55. So they appear to be layered and slightly offset of each other and parallel to the base of the notebook case. Memory sticks get warm inside a computer; so how did the Asus engineers figure out how to deal with heat dispersion when the memory sticks are so close to each other? Seems like a difficult design problem to solve. There's not enough room to install a heat sink anywhere inside the case and computer memory normally doesn't have heat sinks attached and so I'm mainly just curious how they managed to redirect the heat inside the cramped case of the G55.

--Eric
My Asus notebook specs:
CPU
Intel Core i7 @ 2.30GHz 38 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW (SOCKET 0) 40 °C
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M

bignazpwns wrote:
www.newegg.com

Flat out timings dont mean crap. the most important spec is voltage. If you get some high voltage ram chances are it wont run stable at the stock voltage and there is no way to fix this on the G55 since it has not control for that.

Now you dont need to buy a dual channel kit. Hell you dont even need the same brand or speed or ram sticks. I shown that not only can you mix ram speeds and brands it also will run in dual channel. Example i ran 16 gigs of ram 8 of it was stock hynx one stick was a samsung ddr3 1600 and the other was a pny DDR3 1333 and useing intel XTU i was able to run the 1333 at 1600 and it all ran in dual channel. I did a big post on this put up screen shots and benchmarks.

Now your ram will always default to the slowest stick installed. You can get it to full speed with the intel XTU but you can mix the timing and its fine. Heck you can even run dual channel using a 2gig and a 4 gig stick. This has been around for years with intel.


Dont overthink it. People on here put more thought into that then they do about anything else here. And you dont need to just keep in mind this.

You wont get any gaming preformacne gain over DDR1333 vs DDR3 1600. Just how it is. Wont speed up your system nothing just make your benchmarks pretty. Anyone who tells you they got a 5fps gain from it is a liar and don't know how to benchmark You only gain preformance in games when using a igp that uses the system ram. Improve overall system preformance you will want sticks with lower timings and you wont be able to tell the diff. outside of a synthetic benchmark.

Going form 8-16gigs of memory will have no impact on your games what so ever. Most games wont even use more then 2-3 gigs of ram. However if you do 3D work with stuff like Mya or Cad or even heavy photoshop work 16gigs should be your min as those programs can eat up way more then 8gigs. I built a system for a guy who does cad and we went with a sandy bridge e for the 64gigs of ram because the work he did was using more then 32gig's but he was doing very heavy CAD for the auto industry and needed a pc at home that he could work on.


As you mentioned you can mix and match ram but it does not benefit with performance. Since he is not going to replace all four modules the ram will indeed be limited to the least performing module so what would be the point of doing that when you can get much better performance by making sure they are of the same spec. I would have made this clear in my post but I didn't want to go into the deep and get confusing end since after all this will is his first look at upgrading/changing RAM. Thanks for clearing that up though.


Eric_G55V wrote:
Never mind my earlier concern regarding how the new memory would fit inside my case. After a tiny bit of research I figured out how the memory sticks are configured inside the case of the G55. So they appear to be layered and slightly offset of each other and parallel to the base of the notebook case. Memory sticks get warm inside a computer; so how did the Asus engineers figure out how to deal with heat dispersion when the memory sticks are so close to each other? Seems like a difficult design problem to solve. There's not enough room to install a heat sink anywhere inside the case and computer memory normally doesn't have heat sinks attached and so I'm mainly just curious how they managed to redirect the heat inside the cramped case of the G55.

--Eric


Don't worry about the Sizes, there are standards and Asus laptops adhere to the SO-DIMM standard. So as long as it's DDR3 SO-DIMM it will fit. Regarding heat, you won't need to worry about it, they require no active cooling and will only become slightly warm to the touch. They may only get very hot if you were to overclock them and up the voltage but as far as I know that is not even possible on these laptops since the bios is locked.

UnAimed wrote:
Regarding heat, you won't need to worry about it, they require no active cooling and will only become slightly warm to the touch. They may only get very hot if you were to overclock them and up the voltage but as far as I know that is not even possible on these laptops since the bios is locked.


no, some versions of stock bios for g55 do have such options unlocked (mine is, 209). i don't mess with it though (my ram-fu no good :/)

UnAimed wrote:
Don't worry about the Sizes, there are standards and Asus laptops adhere to the SO-DIMM standard. So as long as it's DDR3 SO-DIMM it will fit. Regarding heat, you won't need to worry about it, they require no active cooling and will only become slightly warm to the touch. They may only get very hot if you were to overclock them and up the voltage but as far as I know that is not even possible on these laptops since the bios is locked.


Thanks for clearing up those details regarding system RAM, UnAimed.

-Eric
My Asus notebook specs:
CPU
Intel Core i7 @ 2.30GHz 38 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW (SOCKET 0) 40 °C
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M