What is the best memory for T520 4239 CTO ?

[fstellab]

Folks,

I Just purchased a T520 4239 .. With 4GB memory.  Of course I would like to fill it up to 8 GB.

I saw an old thread on the same subject some suggested:

The Kingston HyperX   KHX1600C9S3K2/4GX   .. Is still a good idea ?

Also, any chance I could load a pair of   8GB sticks to bring it to 16GB ?

Or use one of 2GB sticks that are in . With an  8GB stick ?

Thanks all

-Fred

[tripplec]

G-Skill DD3, it works!!!

[fstellab]

Sorry, I am a bit new at this .. Could you give me a bit more info ..

Also, I have a Pair of Samsung 4gb sticks .. I first purchased a Toshiba .. but did not like it at all .. so I sent it back ..

I was left with 2 sticks of:
Part Number: M471B5273DH0-CH9

Type: DDR3 SODIMM
Capacity: 4GB
Size & Bit: 512M x 64
Speed: PC10600 1333MHz
Pins: 204pin
ECC: No
Registered: No
Chip: Samsung
Rank: 2
CL9

Can I use them ? The Toshiba had a AMD Chip does that make
a difference ?

Thanks again

[nibs Guru · Accepted solution]

The pair of Samsung sticks should work fine. I'm running a similar Samsung stick (Amazon link) in my T420 right now along with the stick from the factory. Since you already have those, you should try them out in the T520 and then decide if you want to go up to 16GB. 16BG (2x8GB) is not "officially" supported, but has been known to work.

Bear in mind that any increase in RAM tends to have a few minor drawbacks. I feel these minor complications are well worth the performance benefits of additional RAM. However I also feel you should know about them. First, an additional stick will increase power consumption slightly as each stick draws a little power, this is often partially offset by the SDD or HDD spinning down more often and drawing less power. Additionally, more RAM will increase time for hibernation or hybrid sleep because the data in RAM has to be written to disk. Finally, if you are using a smaller HDD or SDD please remember that the Windows hibernation file generally takes up space equal to about 75% of the amount of RAM in the system, so 6GB for 8GB of RAM and 12GB for 16GB of RAM. If you use the hibernation feature, it is a good idea to make sure you have sufficient free space prior to installing the RAM.

[tripplec]

True NIBS, but slap that memory in. More is better especially since video uses shared RAM. I'd bump to 16GB if I did not have to dump two perfectly good DIMMS. I have the 9 cell battery and I am very happy with the runtime I get when I am on battery.

Power more power more memory and more performance!!!!

LOL

[nibs Guru]

I've been quite happy with my 8GB, but I imagine 16GB might make more sense with 4 real cores. Right now I'm sitting here with three displays (2 external + internal), about 50 chrome tabs open, an instance of IE open, many pdf documents open, many word documents, and email, etc. I have ~7.5GB of RAM "in use" as reported by the resource monitor (about 600MB of that is to run Pandora). So I'm close to the point of swapping to SSD. As this usage is about the most the machine sees, except when photo or video editing I'm ok with it being near its limit.

[tripplec]

I think its beyond the scope of this thread to understand or discuss what you actually do or doing with all that open.

WOW is all I can say.

My tabs get up when I google and check various links looking for something but I close many during the process. I certainly don't break 10 tabs. As per my sig I am at 8G's

[fstellab]

Thanks all, for now I think I will use the 2 Samsung Sticks ...
BTW my Thinkpad:

T520 4239CTO
Intel Core i5-2540M Processor (3M Cache, 2.60GHz)
Windows 7 Professional 64
15.6" HD+ (1600 x 900)
NVIDIA Quadro NVS4200M Optimus technology (1GB)
4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Hard drive: 500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Express Card Slot, 4-in-1 Card Reader & Smart Card Reader

[nibs Guru]

---

tripplec wrote:
I think its beyond the scope of this thread to understand or discuss what you actually do or doing with all that open.

WOW is all I can say.

---

Actually, I can explain what I'm doing briefly. I'm a law student and right now I am researching the finer points of a statute and writing a memo on the statute. The memo is intended to be understood by non-lawyers. This involves having open the various parts of the official statute, guidance about what it means from official sources, cases pertaining to it, commentary on it, etc. It also involves having open links to dictionaries and a thesaurus so I can make sure it will be understandable by non-lawyers. In addition to the things open on my computer, my desk also includes a >250 page citation manual, some printouts, and a few style guides. At 6ft, things are a little crowded and there isn't much room for my coffee mug, I may need to upgrade to an 8ft desk.

[fstellab]

Folks,

I found something interesting on the: http://forum.notebookreview.com site.

Concerning the Samsung memory, or any DDR3 memory running at a Data Transfer Rate of 1333Mhz :

" Actually when you use it with an i5 CPU it gets downclocked to 1066 as that is the max speed of the mem controller for the i5's. An i7 would run it at full speed. I've got the same series and they read as 1066...."