memory upgrade aspire 5552

[ih]

i want to upgrade my wife"s laptop. With a memory scan it is possible to upgrade it to 8gb.
It currently has 3gb Ram which is 1Gb + 2 Gb (2 slots).i was going to replace 1Gb with 4 Gb
to bring the total to 6Gb. Is this upgrade in order (normal recomendation is upgrade in pairs)
2. Does it matter in which slots they go? eg are slots marked and if 4 gb goes in slot 1 or slot
2 will it make any difference to the laptop and the speed.
3. please note current ram is 1.35 and the replacement will b 1.50v thanking in advance

 

[AronSearle]

Are you sure you need more memory, so many people take this as the default upgrade path when it does not bring the results it used to (because memory used to be more expensive, computers shipped with the bare minimum).

Open task manager = Ctrl+alt+del, and look at the performance tab. This will tell you how much memory you are using, if you are not using more than 3GB then you won't see *any* benefit in upgrading. As an example, if you have word/excel open, several internet tabs, maybe play some music you will still likely be using less than 2gb.

Looking at the specs, the processor is not much cop and is likely the system bottleneck

Putting that aside.

http://www.manualslib.com/manual/1181/Acer-Aspire-5252.html?page=29#manual

Page 29, Does not matter which way round you put them in the slots.

204-pin DDRIII SO-DIMM @ 1333M/Ts

 

[ih]

thanks for the quality info ! you are spot on for the memory usage! her main complain is laptop taking bit longer to open and close
so am asumming it is question of bottleneck! perhaps you can give advise which can perhaps speed up a little. I will disk clean+defrag
and clear browsing history to help. thanks again

 

[AronSearle]

On the hardware side installing an SSD will see some performance gain, but a waste of money IMO on an 'old' laptop

Software side.

Try malwarebytes anti malware

Running 'msconfig' (type msconfig into start search bar and hit enter), go to the 'startup tab' and uncheck programs you don't need loading at start-up (this will not stop any programs from working, they just wont load up at start whether you use them or not, and you can always undo anything, no harm can be done with this).

Defrag as suggested.

bout as much as you can do.

 

[mattylad]

Try the crucial memory scanner to see what memory your system can take.
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/systemscanner

However, it likely wont make any difference, the crucial word you used is "wife".
They tend to put all sort of rubbishy programs they see on the pc, little smiley thingies, cute doggies bounce across the screen etc - all taking up CPU time & slowing the PC down.

Run msconfig.exe and on the boot page, disable anything that you cannot confirm is suitable to run (google it on your pc first).
Post a list of them all & we can advise what to leave running.

Also run a checkdisk & defrag on the drive, empty the recycle bin, put the cat out.

 

[Astra99]

Don't forget that if you are running a 32-bit operating system, it *cannot* use memory in excess of 4GB, and very often the usable memory is 3GB or even less.