Good 8GB RAM for my laptop?

[Technique]

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad L530. Currently has 4GB RAM but i'd like to max it out at 8GB.

I generally buy from ebuyer as i find them to be quite cheap. I was recommended http://www.ebuyer.co...-khx16ls9p1k2-8

but then i saw this one which has reviews: http://www.ebuyer.co...x8gx3m1a1600c10

Pretty much, what would you recommend for this laptop? Why would the Kingston be better than the Corsair, or vice versa? I see little difference other than the voltage.

[Laslow]

Go with the Kingston. It's got both a lower CAS latency, and lower voltage. The voltage also matches with what the Crucial system scanner came up with, so it's less likely to have any compatibility issues with the laptop's motherboard.

[Lprd2007]

It all depends, of course, but in my experience 8GB doesn't make any difference or noticeable speed increase compared to 4GB. I ran benchmarks on my 64 bit laptop using 2, 4, 6, and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, and I only saw an increase from using 4GB vs 2GB. I do use memory hungry software, like Unity, Adobe Creative suite, UDK, and lots of games. If you still would like to upgrade, make sure you get matching or similar memory sticks for optimum performance (check the bandwidth and CAS latencies). I was lucky to get a Kingston that matched the included Samsung memory.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

IMO, other than the voltage, it doesn't matter. You don't have to worry about latencies on a laptop, you are not overclocking it.

[ashpowell]

Corsair.. Has good reviews and cheaper

[Technique]

Interesting - 1 for each.

One is 1.35v, the other 1.5v ....... in simple terms....what's the difference?

[+Warwagon MVC]

"You can never have too much ram" As long as your motherboard supports X amount and you can afford X amount, then don't worry about it.

[BillyJack]

Some motherboards have problems with different voltages specially if it is not what the specification calls for. I would double check that your laptop will have no problems.

[Technique]

"You can never have too much ram" As long as your motherboard supports X amount and you can afford X amount, then don't worry about it.

Don't worry, i don't listen to those who tell me i don't need.

I want, i can afford, it can support therefore there's no problem. It'll be bought. Just a question of which ones.

The laptop i bought has sold out on eBuyer. I'll need to look out the manufacturer code to find the mobo specs.

I'll post back when i can on that.

[Ambroos]

Why not just get it from Crucial? Their prices are pretty good, after-sales service is amazing and the quality of their memory is top-notch!

[Technique]

Because i couldn't remember which i'd heard less than favourable reviews of - Crucial or Corsair.

[ashpowell]

I've had both, and both have been great to be honest.

[Ambroos]

Well I don't know, it's RAM? It works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't you send it back. Crucial is especially good in dealing with the sending back part. I order all my RAM for friends and family from them, never had any single issue.

I mean, it's Micron (Crucial is just the consumer name). They've been around for ages, they even make stuff under the Intel brand.

[primexx]

Corsair is top of the line for RAM and PSUs.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

In my ThinkPads, I have mostly used Corsair, Crucial and Kingston over the years, and found they all seem to work well. More recently, I have started using Geil and Patriot with newer systems (W510, X120e, X220) and they work fine as well.

As long as you get memory which matches the electrical characteristics and timing of the existing memory, you should be fine. If you are looking at purchasing a "genuine" stick from Lenovo to get a matched pair, I would suggest looking at replacing both SO-DIMMS with third-party memory as this is often cheaper than purchasing a single SO-DIMM from Lenovo. This is what I have done, especially when companies like NewEgg have holiday deals and I can max out the RAM in a system quite inexpensively.

One thing you might want to check are the unofficial specs for your computer's RAM at a place like ThinkWiki, the ThinkPad user's mailing list or using Crucial's memory inspector. It may be that your model can support a larger amount of memory like 16GB (2?8GB). Of course, Lenovo doesn't officially support some of these larger amounts of RAM in some systems (usually because the larger SO-DIMMs were not available when they were qualifying memory for the system) but they tend to work fine. Keep your old SO-DIMM handy, though, should you ever need to send the machine in for service.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Ambroos]

You should be careful too though. Some cheaper Intel CPU's don't support over X GB of RAM. Check the Intel spec sheets for your CPU to make sure! If your CPU doesn't support it it really won't work. For my Intel Core i5 460M I can't go over 8GB RAM. The PC does boot with more but depending on the OS it starts acting REALLY weird a few seconds to a few minutes after boot (since the processor is physically uncapable of addressing more).