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Gaming Laptop Upgrade, which should I do first

RAM Upgrade or SSD Upgrade?

  • Total voters
    4
  • Poll closed .
MoiraPrime

MoiraPrime

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Alright, so I have a gaming laptop that's really my main battlestation. It's an EVOO LP6.

The Specs are as follows:
Intel i7-9750H
Nvidia RTX 2060 6GB
144 Hz 17" 1080p display (1920x1080)
16 GB of RAM (2x8GB 2666 MHz)

Inside the laptop there are 3 slots for drives.
2 NVMe M.2 2280
1 SATA slot

Currently in those slots I have
M.2 Slot 1: Intel 660p SSD 1 TB
M.2 Slot 2: Sabrent Rocket SSD 1TB
SATA: WD Black 7200 RPM HDD 750 GB

Now, my intentions are to upgrade the SATA slot HDD (replace it with a 2.5" SSD to reduce vibration) or to upgrade the RAM to 32 GB. I want to do both, but I can only afford one at a time. Which would be worth doing first, the RAM upgrade, or the SSD upgrade?
 
RAM will probably provide the most immediate bang for buck, especially if you're like me and have a lot of browser tabs and programs open simultaneously. Most OSes also use "free" memory to cache stuff behind the scenes but it can be released quickly if it's "really" needed by something else
 
If your looking at RAM watch this video, it shows how some companies are making there RAM slower in a way that doesn't show up on the Specs.
 
The main driver behind considering a RAM upgrade is seeing how much swap (I'm just gonna call page files swap) windows has reserved. Also, Even with 0 games or browser windows open, I'm already using 45% of the available RAM from my own background tasks. Plus there's things like JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor) which can use a ton of RAM too... not to mention running a browser bumps up an extra 10% of my RAM. Windows Task Manager says it already has 24 GB of swap reserved. I think a RAM upgrade wouldn't hurt.

Edit: Also is Crucial any good?
 
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Would anyone here be willing to help me get my best value? I prefer using amazon so if you find a good deal on amazon link me. Here's CPU-Z screenshots of my current RAM.
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Check your BIOS for XMPP settings. Most DDR3+ ram has a fairly slow "base" frequency and not all systems will move to the supported higher settings.

My DDR3-2400 also runs at 1333 until I go turn on the XMP profiles, then it clocks 2133.
 
Quick google search says there's nothing wrong with my RAM speed. The fastest supported RAM with this intel processor is DDR4-2666. There are no XMPP options in BIOS. I do NOT intend to do anything crazy or try to overclock ram.
 
the point is you have DDR2667, but it's only running at half its capable speed

It's not an overclock in that sense, it's been qualified as capable.
 
hmm... Pretty sure I have DDR3-2400 and it runs at 2133, not 1200 or half 2133. (doesn't do the full 2400 because the board/cpu can't handle it)

But it's been a while since I poked at that
 
CPU-Z displays the Bus rate apparently, not the data rate. The bus speed is half the data rate. It's running at full speed.
 
On a casual look, the ram should be decent enough, as the timings/latencies are in line with other 32GB kits, and the price looks to the be the best for it's class. However, with DDR5 being just over the horizon for the laptop market (I believe), that might lead retailers to clear out RAM over the coming months, especially Black Friday deals.

Something else I would mention is that if you were to upgrade to a 2.5" SATA SSD instead, especially with a power efficient model such as the SK Hynix s31 Gold, one of the most efficient 2.5" SSDs, you may be able to see an improvement in battery life for long idle periods, not to mention a much smaller chance of the destruction of the drive in the event of dropping it/the laptop.
 
Looks decent. Honestly there's not a lot of difference these days in terms of RAM anymore except for the super cheap sketchy stuff that has horrible clock rates for the unsuspecting buyer that just looks at the capacity.

If you can wait until Black friday that is probably a very good opportunity to save a few bucks, especially if it's older gen stuff that's right in the "sweet spot" of being new enough it's still plentiful, and cheap because it's not so old it's hard to find.

SSD power saving is a good point, though I've been watching prices since I'd like to get more capacity in my desktop and they're still fairly high due to international supply shortages. (especially in my case because I'd need to replace all 4 drives in a RAID5. I expect those prices will normalize a bit more in the next year if you can wait that long.
 
I just need to be careful. I've heard that there was a point in the DDR3 to DDR4 transition that DDR3 prices rose rather quickly.
 
Fair point, and I know how annoying that could be. Ultimately, either would be an acceptable upgrade, and I personally would lean towards the RAM if you could actually use the increased capacity and/or don't care too much about a few extra minutes of battery life from an SSD.

Moira Prime said:
The main driver behind considering a RAM upgrade is seeing how much swap (I'm just gonna call page files swap) windows has reserved. Also, Even with 0 games or browser windows open, I'm already using 45% of the available RAM from my own background tasks. Plus there's things like JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor) which can use a ton of RAM too... not to mention running a browser bumps up an extra 10% of my RAM. Windows Task Manager says it already has 24 GB of swap reserved. I think a RAM upgrade wouldn't hurt.
Click to expand...

On a side note, what background tasks/bloatware do you have running? The RAM usage definitely looks to be quite high, especially since on my desktop with 32GB RAM there is about 5GB in system services and other things used (steam and a few other things), and about 6GB when a few tabs are open. However, when I have around 100 tabs open in Firefox and cached, it can climb to about 13GB used, so there is something to be said for more rather than less.
 
Spotify, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Outlook, Steam, all seem to push it up to 40-50% of RAM used.. and then opening a browser (I use vivaldi) can kick it up to 60%.
 
Steam is definitely a complete turd in that regard. There's an open bug that's been there for AGES where the stupid animated frames cause chat to consume an entire CPU core doing nothing.
 
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