Installing More RAM in Laptop Than The Maximum

YanAndrew said:

The maximum RAM my laptop supports is 8GB according to the documentation. For some time now, I've had a total of 10GB of RAM installed and this 10GB is reflected in the About section in Settings. Does that mean that my laptop has been utilising all 10GB all this time or is that 2GB not used even though it is reflected in the About section?

The documentation for the Dell Vostro 3550 in your 'My Computer' specs do indeed say the maximum memory is 8GB...
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...docs#doc-types

...but the specs for it's Intel i5-2430M say that this CPU can manage up to 16GB.
Intel.com | Intel® Core™ i5-2430M Processor

Whether Windows can see and use up to 16GB depends on whether the motherboard supports more than 8GB. That's not clear from the documentation.

To see what's actually being used, and what isn't, open Task Manager. Look at Memory on the Performance tab. This will show you what memory the CPU can see. Look at the figures I've shown in bold. If it says something like '5.0/10.0 GB (50%)' next to the memory graph then it is using the full 10GB, if not it would show '4.0/8.0 GB (50%)' and at the bottom right it would show the remaining 2GB as 'Hardware reserved' (ie, unavailable to the system).

I like using dxdiag in the Run box to see more about the RAM use.

Yes that 10gb is what windows can utilize. Because the memory controller is on the CPU, the info page is correct because its reporting the usable memory.

You can take a look with rammap
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sy...wnloads/rammap

If it shows 10gb total at the bottom I would take that as confirmation.

I would be tempted to put in 2x8gb and see what happens.



you can also what reflect has mapped. It is the second highest on my system after the browser