OK, so I got an used Asus G53jw (sz154v) for dirt cheap from a friend of mine, since it had a broken HDD and few other minor issues I knew I could fix myself. The thing also had only 4GB of DDR3 RAM installed, which I decided to upgrade to 8.

After hunting down the new components and learning how to disassemble this monstrosity (a lot more demanding process than with my old G60VX !), I was hit with an unexpected problem: the secondary SO-DIMM slot is nowhere to found!

I took off the bottom cover, and there seems to be only 1 slot, which is naturally already occupied by the default 4GB stick.
I removed the keyboard and touchpad, and took a peek under the black piece of plastic, but there's absolutely no SO-DIMM slots, just couple tiny lumps of tin where I guess the thing SHOULD BE located (the placement fit the overall shape of the RAM stick).

So have I got this correct: this mysterious version of G53JW has only ONE RAM slot, maximum memory of 8GB, but only way to upgrade is to get a single 8GB stick that costs a fortune??