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Question

Increasing RAM on slow running Windows 10 System

Sep 8, 2016 7:17AM PDT

Hi All,

I just wanted to seek some advice on my current system and whether it would be worth upgrading my RAM.

I have a Samsung Notebook NP305U1A which is a few years old now but in my opinion still has a decent spec. It used to run fast as all laptops do but has gradually become painfully slow.

I upgraded to Windows 10 in the hopes that it might perhaps run smoother than 7 but to no avail. It is hideously slow at switching to or opening new apps.

The spec I have is:
Processor: AMD E-450 1.65GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: Windows 10 64bit

I pretty much exclusively use the laptop for web browsing etc. I tried doing a reinstall of Windows 10 recently which didn't make any difference.

Would increasing the RAM from 4GB to 8GB make any difference? I find it hard to believe that 4GB wouldn't be enough to run Windows 10 smoothly even when I don't have any programs open so I'm not sure if there's perhaps some other problem.

Any advice welcome!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
A little. Not as much as you hope for.
Sep 8, 2016 9:04AM PDT

My oldest laptop running W10 is a Dell Inspiron 2009 E1505 that at first had 1GB RAM. Because the HDD was failing I changed that to a 30 dollar 120GB SSD and reinstalled the OS. Luckily it got the W10 offer.

After that it was booting up from cold to the desktop in 45 seconds or so. I lucked into a 15 dollar 2GB RAM kit and that dropped to "from cold to a google search result in 33 seconds."

It's not slow at all but let's compare your CPU to this old CoreDuo.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-Duo-T2300E-vs-AMD-E-450 on the surface looks about equal.

So if I were to upgrade I'd replace the HDD with SSD. Shop Amazon for the SSD sales.

It won't be smooth at that low a CPU but it doesn't have to take forever to do things.

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Answer
Try to upgrade both.
Oct 3, 2016 3:35PM PDT

It’s helpful to switch from HHD to SSD and better to upgrade the Ram in the same time. 4GB is limited to run a laptop.