RAM Memory brand name question...

Bell206

Final Approach
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Bell206
Instead of resurrecting the “Built a New Computer” thread, I’ll just start a new one. My original question was: would maxing out my RAM and upgrading to a SSD improve the performance on my Dell E5440.

I’ve since cleaned up the minor issues indicated in my last userbenchmark scan and added a novabench report to the mix to use a baseline.

After reading more, I can’t quite justify upgrading from my current Seagate SSHD 500G to a SSD but plan to upgrade the RAM from the current Micron 1x4G to the max of 2x8G (16GB).

Does anybody have any experience with memorystock.com? They have a house brand at $28 per 8G for total of $56. Plus free ship, 14 day return, lifetime replacement warranty.

I’ve never bought any memory outside DELL before as I had a killer discount through my previous employer. Any input/suggestions would be appreciated.

https://www.memorystock.com/memory/DellLatitudeE5440.html
 
I use Crucial for pretty much every type of computer. Never had a problem. Yes, adding memory is the cheapest upgrade to any computer. Not always the cheapest, but most reliable.
 
+1 on Crucial. I also have ECC Samsung sticks around in my server gear. I don't like buying cheap/noname memory because their failure modes can be insidious and hard to pinpoint.

Even if the debugging aspect of faulty RAM doesn't annoy you, you're betting that memorystock.com will be around longer than Crucial to honor that warranty. Up to you if that's worth the savings of tens of dollars.
 
I used corsair ram in mine and maxed it out. It moves pretty darn good. I also bought a smaller SSD for my OS to reside on then a WD black drive for everything else. Coupled with the I7 I have no problems doing most anything. Could always get a smaller SSD for just the OS, that will help.
 
Could always get a smaller SSD for just the OS, that will help.
I had looked at several SSD options but didn't see a big enough difference. Plus I have several proprietary programs that were a problem to migrate to this drive and I don't know if I want to go through that again. Considering Windows 8.1 will sunset in 2023 I plan to move into a Linux machine and will no longer need those older programs. But for now just want to get my Latitude faster while running open-source MyPaint, Gimp, Inkscape. Thanks.
 
An SSD will make your hair fly back.
Even if I'm upgrading from a SSHD?

From a straight HD I have read it's mind blowing, but from an SSHD not so much, especially with my current Seagate SSHD 500G???
 
Even if I'm upgrading from a SSHD?

From a straight HD I have read it's mind blowing, but from an SSHD not so much, especially with my current Seagate SSHD 500G???
I would say yes an SSD will be faster. I say that because on the SSHD your main programs still reside on the mechanical side of the drive so they are no different than a regular HD. The SS part of it is for temp storage of files to help things move a little faster. I'm sure someone somewhere has done a test between the two.

What MOBO do you have and do you know its RAM limits? Compared to what you have now and the upgrade capability it might not be even worth it...Just a thought.
 
What MOBO do you have and do you know its RAM limits?
The board is a Dell 061CGT with a i5-4300U chip set. Max RAM is 16GB. But the more I think of it I will probably go with a max memory upgrade and wait till I replace this machine and then go SSD. Thanks.
 
If you already have 8 megs RAM, another 8 will not even be noticeable unless you are running high intensity graphics programs. Nothing!!
 
If you already have 8 megs RAM, another 8 will not even be noticeable unless you are running high intensity graphics programs. Nothing!!
I only have 1x4GB. And yes I'm trying to improve the performance with Inkscape (vector creation), GIMP (raster editor), and MyPaint (painting program). Thanks.
 
I only have 1x4GB. And yes I'm trying to improve the performance with Inkscape (vector creation), GIMP (raster editor), and MyPaint (painting program). Thanks.
Max that out with some matched RAM and enjoy! From 4 to 16 gig you will notice that a good bit.
 
Firstly, you have to understand than three manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) make the vast majority of RAM chips in the world. Other "manufacturers" solder those chips onto sticks and sell them. No matter what RAM you buy, chances are that it will use the same chips as other RAM made during the same time. So what you're looking for are value, reputation, and a lifetime warranty.

On the value end, I find Crucial to be the best overall for the vast majority of applications. Crucial is a brand name owned by Micron, so in effect you're cutting out the middle man. Same goes for Samsung, which is also excellent RAM, but usually a bit more pricey than Crucial. I believe that SK Hynix also sells its own RAM under the Hyundai brand name, but I've never tried it so I can't vouch for it.

The difference between "gaming RAM" and any other RAM has more to do with heat-tolerance than anything else. Unless you're a gamer or doing other really high-end, sustained, RAM-intensive work such as > 4K video editing and rendering, it's doubtful that you'll ever realize any improvement using, say, Crucial Ballistix Elite versus Crucial's "standard" RAM sticks of the same speed ratings.

I have also installed many Kingston RAM sticks in average clients' computers over the decades, and none of them have ever failed, to my knowledge. I don't know if it's still the case, but Kingston used to manufacturer their own chips, but didn't sell them to other manufacturers.

What it comes down to is that for an average user, any RAM labeled by a major manufacturer and having a lifetime warranty will probably be just fine. Go to Micro Center, see what's on sale, and ask the salesman for their advice based on the intended use. Most of them are pretty knowledgeable and honest.

Personally, Crucial is always my default choice for both RAM and SSD's based on value.

Rich
 
Just bought a new Dell
1TB SSD. 16GB (Crucial) RAM Dual-ranked.
Silly-fast CPU
I cannot keep up with it, it is so fast.
 
If I could only afford one upgrade it would be the SSD over RAM.

What size SSD do you need and what brands were you shopping?

Most of the value (read: older tech but still smokes any spinning platter disk even those hybrid Seagate things you’re using, and I’ve used those — they’re not very fast at all) and super cheap.

Samsung is my favorite for price point and reliability on SSD. And seconded Rich’s choice of Crucial for RAM on a budget.

Here’s a why an SSD smokes the RAM upgrade. If your RAM is full for any reason in a modern OS, the OS will store RAM pages not being used on the hard disk. It’ll do this and then run a little of something then swap the running thing out to disk, pull the other thing in from disk to RAM and run a little of that. And back and forth. That’s what a RAM needy system does.

If it’s swapping to an SSD running as fast as the disk bus will go, this allows a lot more swaps in the same amount of time as searching around the mechanical disk. And on those hybrids the SSD portion isn’t big enough for the system to swap out to it without it having to also shove things on to the spinning platter and get them back again later.

PLUS the SSD is fast all the time for when the system is NOT swapping. Launch a new program it’s up almost instantly, no drive seek time at all.

If dollars are tight, SSD only is my preferred way to limp a machine along with a significant performance increase.

Side note: You really don’t want a system swapping RAM out ever, but if you have to do it, swapping to SSD is much much much less painful.

We stopped buying machines with hard drives at work a couple of years ago. It saves that much time. Easily cost justified in business.

These days we want the M2 stuff or faster SSDs when we can get them. But for older machine retrofits, SATA SSDs are still quite spiffy.

I can’t believe how fast some of the micro PCs we got from Dell that have the fast SSD interfaces are. They smoke huge multiprocessor servers until you jam multiple virtual machines on them or something silly. Boot times even without Windows quick boot are insane. You push the power button from cold start and count to ten. Done.

Let us know what your budget is. There’s almost GOT to be an SSD that’ll work at your price point. Even if it’s an older tech off-brand it’ll make you want to toss that Seagate in the dumpster. (But don’t. It’s a solid backup drive or whatever. Good for slow data.)
 
If I could only afford one upgrade it would be the SSD over RAM.
I understand the basics of the difference, but as I mentioned above I plan to go with maxing the RAM and then in 3 years or so upgrade the laptop and get the SSD at that time. I have several legacy programs installed that were a pain to reload to this drive and I really don't want to go through that again. If all goes as planned, in 3 years I will no longer need those programs either. The main reason for looking at the upgrades was to quicken up my current use of several open-source graphics programs which the consensus shows the additional 12G RAM will get me the change I'm looking for at this time. Thanks for the input.
 
Wouldn’t need to reload the software. Just copy the drive with free drive imaging software. It would take needing a $5-10 USB to SATA adapter or little case to stick the original drive in.

The free version of Macrium Reflect works well for that sort of thing but there’s a bunch of options. Boots from USB stick if needed and then drive copy and reboot. Done.
 
I've found the Crucial SSD's to be every bit as fast and reliable as the Samsungs in real-world use, and only slightly slower in extreme benchmark tests that far exceed the demands of any real-world use. But they're about 30 percent less expensive (at least at Micro Center).

Wirecutter came to pretty much the same conclusion and rated them their No. 1 choice this year.

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-ssds/

Not that I have anything against Samsung, mind you. I have those, too. But I chose Crucial for the last computer I upgraded and the one I recently built.

Rich
 
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Wouldn’t need to reload the software.
Unfortunately 2 of the programs are proprietary for some consulting I do which require me to have them removed and reinstalled individually--their rules. The 3rd is an old analysis program for a piece of dynamic balance equipment I have that has given IT guys issues when moving it around. But if all goes well in 3 years, I will be deleting those programs forever:).
 
For graphics, video, and photo manipulation, memory is king. Even with SSD swap time will kill you. Some programs won't even run on less than 8-12 GB of memory.

I assume you have 64 bit version of Windows installed. If you don't, it's a must for adding memory (32 bit has a limit around 3 GB)
 
Unfortunately 2 of the programs are proprietary for some consulting I do which require me to have them removed and reinstalled individually--their rules. The 3rd is an old analysis program for a piece of dynamic balance equipment I have that has given IT guys issues when moving it around. But if all goes well in 3 years, I will be deleting those programs forever:).

Drive imaging isn’t “moving it all around”. And it’s an industry standard way to back up expensive software and your data when on a workstation.

Drives fail all the time. Any vendor who says not to make backups of the entire OS and applications can shove their rules right where the sun doesn’t shine. Been in this biz way too long to put up with their non-standard crap.

The only software I’ve ever seen that even had anywhere close to that level of hardware monitoring was $15,000 a workstation and that was plenty of money for the vendor to have staff available 24/7 to approve a hardware change detected by their stuff.

Respectfully you need backups if that’s the only place your applications and data live. Restoring from a proper image backup happens at the speed of the drives. Paying a small biz IT guy or consultant by the hour to move things manually or piecemeal together a fix after this well known failure mode happens, often leads to problems like they mentioned, having trouble “moving it around.”

In larger environments like my office, laptop operating systems are perishable. It’s WAY faster to blow away the entire machine and reinstall from clean OS image, and all non-standard application software media is locked in a drawer in a locked office, currently right behind me. We don’t have time to do manual junk. Most of the reinstalling of everything that’s supposed to be on every machine is automated. We tell users if the data wasn’t stored on the “share”/NAS, it’s gone in a reload. We focus backups and testing on the large NAS and never waste time with “commodity” desktop or laptop equipment. Whole machines aren’t even $1000 for many of our user needs. It costs us more to pay one of us to mess with it for a day than to have spares or order a new one with overnight shipping.

But understanding you’re not a large office with large numbers or anything — your best option for backups, which also works perfectly for drive swaps, is whole drive image copying. Should be making one at the rate of however often your work would cost more than the backup drive to re-create/replace upon hardware failure.

Just thoughts for your business to ponder from an old IT guy, managing way more than one laptop. :)

With that, I have a dead laptop to attend to. It won’t power up. Probably be handing that user the spare that’s already imaged and seeing if his is still under warranty. If not, into the electronics recycling pile it goes. This stuff really is razor blades for the razor handle these days. It’s not stable enough to plan to do anything other than disk images.

Good luck. Definitely tell that software vendor to shove it if they don’t have a 24/7, preferably automated / but real live humans will suffice, way to replace dead hard drives. They’re guaranteed to fail. Tell them you not managing your own backups or needing their permission to reinstall isn’t acceptable, unless they are a 24/7 shop.
 
Drive imaging isn’t “moving it all around”.
Whoa. You read way too much into my last post. Never mentioned backups, OS system, software vendors, etc. To clarify, the company I consult for tracks contractor copies of their software. Part of my agreement is if I need to "move" their program to another machine they want to perform that move and record where it goes. Nothing more. It's really no big deal except I need to schedule the change and travel to have it done which can be a pain.

As for my "moving around" comment it was directed to my balance program not the consulting software above. The balancer only has a serial and parallel port patch cable. Sometimes after installing in a new computer the old analyzer program will not communicate properly with the balancer. As this is above my skill level I usually have someone else reconfigure ports/adapters until they transfer the data. The balancer/analyzer program is very, very old but still works for what I need it for. To replace balance kit would cost over $5K which I don't need.

As I said earlier, I'm looking for a stop gap measure to make my graphics programs work better on my current laptop. But appreciate your input.
 
Drive imaging isn’t “moving it all around”. And it’s an industry standard way to back up expensive software and your data when on a workstation.

Drives fail all the time. Any vendor who says not to make backups of the entire OS and applications can shove their rules right where the sun doesn’t shine. Been in this biz way too long to put up with their non-standard crap.

The only software I’ve ever seen that even had anywhere close to that level of hardware monitoring was $15,000 a workstation and that was plenty of money for the vendor to have staff available 24/7 to approve a hardware change detected by their stuff.

Respectfully you need backups if that’s the only place your applications and data live. Restoring from a proper image backup happens at the speed of the drives. Paying a small biz IT guy or consultant by the hour to move things manually or piecemeal together a fix after this well known failure mode happens, often leads to problems like they mentioned, having trouble “moving it around.”

In larger environments like my office, laptop operating systems are perishable. It’s WAY faster to blow away the entire machine and reinstall from clean OS image, and all non-standard application software media is locked in a drawer in a locked office, currently right behind me. We don’t have time to do manual junk. Most of the reinstalling of everything that’s supposed to be on every machine is automated. We tell users if the data wasn’t stored on the “share”/NAS, it’s gone in a reload. We focus backups and testing on the large NAS and never waste time with “commodity” desktop or laptop equipment. Whole machines aren’t even $1000 for many of our user needs. It costs us more to pay one of us to mess with it for a day than to have spares or order a new one with overnight shipping.

But understanding you’re not a large office with large numbers or anything — your best option for backups, which also works perfectly for drive swaps, is whole drive image copying. Should be making one at the rate of however often your work would cost more than the backup drive to re-create/replace upon hardware failure.

Just thoughts for your business to ponder from an old IT guy, managing way more than one laptop. :)

With that, I have a dead laptop to attend to. It won’t power up. Probably be handing that user the spare that’s already imaged and seeing if his is still under warranty. If not, into the electronics recycling pile it goes. This stuff really is razor blades for the razor handle these days. It’s not stable enough to plan to do anything other than disk images.

Good luck. Definitely tell that software vendor to shove it if they don’t have a 24/7, preferably automated / but real live humans will suffice, way to replace dead hard drives. They’re guaranteed to fail. Tell them you not managing your own backups or needing their permission to reinstall isn’t acceptable, unless they are a 24/7 shop.

The one sentence I've never heard uttered by a client (nor anyone else) in all my years in IT is: "I wish we didn't have so many good backups to choose from." You can never have too many backups.

By the way, Macrium is now the King.

Rich
 
^^^^ This.

I had one client that swore up and down that he had good backups of the RAID-6 system done every day. The RAID system had two bad drives in it. Turned out client never tested the backups, which were done without verification.

You know the rest of the story.
 
Just lost my SSD, it was Sandisk. Replaced with Crucial now as the primary and have a WD Blue SSD as a backup that will be cloned weekly along with backups to the NAS.
 
Whoa. You read way too much into my last post. Never mentioned backups, OS system, software vendors, etc. To clarify, the company I consult for tracks contractor copies of their software. Part of my agreement is if I need to "move" their program to another machine they want to perform that move and record where it goes. Nothing more. It's really no big deal except I need to schedule the change and travel to have it done which can be a pain.

You’re still not moving it to another machine. This SSD goes right in the existing machine.
 
Yes, 64 Bit. And I can max the m-board to 16G which is my plan. Thanks.

Seeing this I may have also thought you were the other poster who was already upgrading RAM and worried that the different chips would be lied about by the OS.

Sorry. Been distracted. The power outage left some weirdness today at work. Like a $35,000 firewall deciding it wouldn’t do DHCP proxy while it’s cousin and the offline one, would haha. Gah this software is so awful these days.
 
Just lost my SSD, it was Sandisk. Replaced with Crucial now as the primary and have a WD Blue SSD as a backup that will be cloned weekly along with backups to the NAS.

How long?

We’re at six or seven years on some Samsung VNAND stuff and no indications from anything including their tools that they’re getting unhappy yet.
 
^^^^ This.

I had one client that swore up and down that he had good backups of the RAID-6 system done every day. The RAID system had two bad drives in it. Turned out client never tested the backups, which were done without verification.

You know the rest of the story.

Having written backup software and been responsible for IT systems, my position is:you don’t have backups until you’ve fully restored them onto clean hardware and verified it all works. We do weekly read verification of backups and quarterly restoration tests.
 
Seeing this I may have also thought you were the other poster who was already upgrading RAM and worried that the different chips would be lied about by the OS.

Sorry. Been distracted. The power outage left some weirdness today at work. Like a $35,000 firewall deciding it wouldn’t do DHCP proxy while it’s cousin and the offline one, would haha. Gah this software is so awful these days.
As I suggest to some of my CS students that shouldn't be there....have you considered transferring to Art History? Much less aggravation.
 
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