RAM upgrade in Gateway notebook

[Ed989]

I am increasing the amount of RAM in a friend's Gateway MT6452 laptop. The laptop is running Vista with only 1 gig of RAM (2x512) and is rather sluggish. Yesterday, I ordered a 4 gig Corsair (2x2gig) kit for the laptop. I realize all 4 gigs won't be recognized, but the 4 gig kit was only about $15 dollars more than the 2 gig kit, so I figured I might as well go for it.

Here is my concern: As I was looking for more info on the laptop this morning, I found several sites that say the memory slots on the laptop will support up to 1 gig modules. Does this mean that the 4 gig kit will not work? Do you think I should pop the 2 gig sticks in and just see if it works anyway, or should I just do an RMA right when they arrive and order two 1 gig sticks instead? I tried contacting Gateway customer support, but they want all kinds of proof of purchase info on the laptop (which I do not have) before they will answer my question. Thanks.

-Ed

[EzyStvy]

There is a small chance the 2x2gig would run as 1x1 and be a waste....But I'd RAM the ram without opening the lit.

[glc]

http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...x?model=MT6452

No good. The time to research compatibility is BEFORE ordering parts.

RMA it without opening it, expect to pay a 15% restocking fee and return shipping, write off the extra expense as a lesson learned.

[kilgoretrout]

I bought a Compaq Presario F730 laptop over a year ago that I got dirt cheap at a Staples since it was a floor model. It too had 1GB of ram(2 X 512MB) and came with vista. I installed linux on it and left vista on its own partition as vista performance was terrible. It also had a max 1GB of ram per slot.

I saw a cheap special on what I thought was compatible ram(2GB) at newegg and quickly ordered the ram. It turns out that instead of being two 1GB sticks it was one 2GB stick. Every spec I could find on this laptop and its motherboard said that each ram slot was 1GB max. The ram was so cheap(under $20, free shipping) and given the return postage costs and hassle of rma, I decided to keep the ram and give it a try just to see what would happen.

I replaced one of the 512MB ram sticks with the 2GB stick and it has worked fine ever since(over 6 months). All the ram is detected in the bios and is detected under both vista and linux. I ran memtest on it overnight and got zero errors. YMMV but if the cost of the items doesn't justify the return postage, rma hassles and restocking fee, you may want to give it a try. If the ram is detected in the bios, it will probably run fine. It certainly won't hurt anything that I can think of; it will either work or it won't. You may want to try one stick at a time and give it several hours under memtest if it's detected by your bios just to be sure you're not getting any errors.

[Ed989]

Is there any chance that installing the 2 gig modules just to see if it works will damage the laptop or screw up BIOS settings etc. in any way?

[JohnMerlino]

No. I had 2 gig modules totalling 4 gigs in windows xp 32-bit. It wouldn't even let me get into post. Computer just wouldn't turn on. I figured the motherboard was bad or something. Then I took one out and put 1 gig totaling 3 gig. And then it worked. As soon as I read the asus handbook, it clearly stated that xp 32 couldn't take more than 3. So i put the 2 in another computer and it works fine.