Desktop RAM upgrade question

Off vaping topic, but hoping for advice on RAM (DDR4) upgrade I am planning. I have a simple question, I think: I want to replace a single Samsung 8GB 3200 (PC4 25600) that has a CAS Latency of 22, with (2)16GB sticks.

My question is, if I purchase the same speed (3200) Corsair Vengeance LPX (16GB X 2) but having a different clock latency (C16) SHOULD my HP motherboard/Ryzen 5 3500 recognize the RAM and boot with no BIOS issues?

Big thanks if anyone can help me out here.

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perhaps you need some, DEDIDATED WAM

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@HVPGH I would deep dive the MB specs and verify the CAS options.

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LOL - That is an impossibility with recent HP motherboards, they are to say the lease protective of their architecture.

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@HVPGH how did you go? Did you work this out?

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Wow. First, if you want transparency with respect to upgrading OEM computing architecture, do not ever purchase a HP product! I called them directly after reading of a number of people having difficulties with my model / adding ram & the mother board. I spent literally over 2.5 hours on the phone being transferred to various departments (customer service, sales, technical assistance). None of them could answer my product or even recommend buying an upgrade directly from them. I had called about this sometime ago after first purchasing the PC (18 months ago), and was told that they were out of the RAM that was compatible with the unit, and they gave me a list of preferred vendors, which at the time I gave up on upgrading.

The worst part of the hours long telephone ordeal was that the last guy I spoke with, was exasperated and told me, “look man just buy a new PC, your box isn’t upgradeable” I was incensed and hung up when he refused to put on a supervisor. (I know the PC is upgradeable I just want to keep it simple)

The next day, I found the specs for the motherboard (that I had identified with 3rd party software). It says right in HP’s own marketing material that the "Alexa motherboard with 2 RAM slots is upgradeable on 64bit systems to 32GB ram. Loaded for bear I called HP again and by some dumb luck the call was answered by a really nice guy in a subsidiary company, “Omen Gaming”. He listened to my question and recommended that I stick with the same speed (3200 ddr4, or less) and not worry about the shipped clock speed; as the PC should just throttle it down to the highest it is capable of running, without overclocking. Worst case scenario, I have to flash the bios by removing the battery and reinstalling it. He was a real gent, and was quite taken aback by the rudeness of the jerk that told me to buy a new one. I reported him in fact.

At days end yesterday, I decided to just buy another identical RAM stick (to the one 8GB Samsung that is already in the PA) off of Ebay. I should be fine with 16GB and this box has now lost a lot of it’s luster (new machines already have DDR5), the more I know about it. For the price I was going to pay for 2 compatible 16GB sticks, I got one 8GB and a Samsung EVO 2.5SD. (The PC only came with a 258GB M.2 NVMe drive / no harddrives).

Sorry for the length of this reply, thanks for asking! :slight_smile:

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I have been building my own PC’s for quite a few years now and honestly, unless you are doing some very intense gaming that 16GB will be more than enough. Personally, I feel you will see your real speed boost with the SSD drive vs a HDD drive. I haven’t tossed windows 11 on my play PC yet to test it out ( I haven’t heard great things, so no rush to do so) But winblows 10 and below will perform just fine with 16gigs of ram. Linux?? heck you’re good with 8 :slight_smile: I sort of jest as I haven’t run any of the newer Linux distro’s lately so I can’t say that for sure.

I do some pretty intense gaming and when I did go up to 32gig from 16, I truly didn’t see a big difference. It was minimal at best. I have a HDD and a SSD in mine. When I installed the MMO I play on the SSD, there was an improvement in the loading times for sure. Not sure if any of that info helps you much, but imo you will perfectly fine with that 16 :slight_smile: Of course this is just based on my personal experience so YMMV

and I just read you have a NVMe drive not a HDD but more space is always a plus! Good call on getting another drive

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Adobe Photoshop and Premiere are what killed me @Deb50, actually PS more so, because I had soo many high res photos open at the same time. 32 was better, but I ended up sucking it up and landed on 64, BUT, that was specific to my needs.

Very agreed, and for all intense and purposes, a NVMe even more (at least it was for me).

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Glad you got it sorted @HVPGH albeit the PITA way. I run numerous HP laptops, some very old, some brand new, and I can’t complain. Some of the older ones I purchased used, specifically because of the firewire chipset for my Personus Studio Live board. HP is just like the other MFG’s out there, and very often get “custom” parts from MFG’s for their builds. Cost saving, feature adding/cutting, etc.

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I run 64Gb in my desktop, 32 in my main laptop. However, it’s the graphics card that help me when rendering video. I am old school due to budget constraints and built my own Desktop using an ROG motherboard, a Devils Canyon i5 k model overclocked to just under 5Ghz, a GTX based modded GPU with 4Gb DDR5 ram, 2 x Evo 2.5 SSD’s, 3 x 2TB and 2 x 4TB HDD’s all in a extra large case and 3 Samsung “true black” FHD 23 inch monitors.

I agree with @Deb50 that unless you are doing intensive processing work, the ram is not the most important thing. Fast SSD and a good GPU will give you more bang for buck.

My main laptop, which I am using right now, has a 4Gb GPU and a M.2 drive for the main SSD (super fast) and a EVO 850 2.5 for the secondary drive.

I gave up on HP hardware years ago due to being hard to work with. Much rather ROG gear here…

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Yep, NVMe I think is about the fastest you can go. Granted I haven’t built in a few years. Eyes and hands aren’t what they used to be. My last PC about a year or so ago I went with a pre-built and I will NEVER do that again. I had to take it apart and work on it and first one I had to send back as they put it together incorrectly AND I could tell they had dropped it by the corner dent and long scratch on the case. Nope, if I need another PC I will damn well walk my daughter on how to put it together. She can be my eyes and hands LOL. Eyes, I can always get a magnifier, hands? not so much :slight_smile:

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Deb, Ianc, Mr Drummer:

My PC was a pretty much barebone’s pre-build HP TG01-0023W (they call it the Walmart special) which I got on sale and an additional 10% off. It seems to be a good deal as the total aggregate of the parts value now exceeds the $$$ I paid for it (the PC is still for sale although they have jacked up the price by 23% since April 2021 /inflation?)

Yeah, I am running Windows 10 also (it took me years to get rid of Windows XP before going to 8 and then years to go to 10). I have absolutely no desire to go to 11.

I don’t really play “games” in the truest sense, all I really play is Golf Clash which I access via Facebook and play with a mouse on my PC (most people play it on a mobile pad or phone). I have been having to close almost everything except for the incidence of Opera or Chrome or Edge that my FB is on the play of late. That is when I decided to get more ram. I really don’t need more than 16. Whilst working in accounts receivable during my working years and dealing with huge data tables, algorithms, and stuff like exchange market data I needed a lot of RAM (but then I had IT support) anyways now I am retired.

Since I am getting a new storage drive, what would be the most effective way to utilize? (Should I leave all the windows components on the M.2 and just move all my saved files to the 2.5SSD?)

Thanks to all for the feedback (I was reading some of the other comments before adding this reply)

Footnote: HP adds a lot of bloatware and even some potential keylogging privacy questionable hard to kill programs running on their builds. I.e, there is this program “HP TouchPoint Analytics” that was running all the time and consuming a good chunk of ram. I had a hell of a time getting it removed. In fact the only was to stop it was by going into a run command for “services.msc” , stopping it and then disabling it from starting again. It took me two days to find this solution on my own browsing forums and such. Funny thing, HP used to be one of my company’s clients and I really didn’t care for them back during the Carly Fiorina days. Now I like them less.

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I have watched a bunch of videos on Linux and am probably going to try to breathe life into an old laptop I have laying around. Pop/Ubuntu/Zorin and utilizing Rufus to boot it with a flash drive. It seems to make a lot of sense, especially since I can’t break it (it already is dead and I don’t have any OS to reinstall in it).

Linux sounds great, but there is a definite learning curve involved. I am at the point where I kinda question my prowess in new endeavors a bit.

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Awesome! I use Rufus also and sure, there is a learning curve but it’s so fun to play around with. Don’t question, just do it! You will have fun and if you need any help, just holler. I’m no expert by any means but I might be able to help if you run into any snags. That or there are others here I am sure can help

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That would work out fine.

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That would be the best scenario @HVPGH as the M.2 should be faster than the SSD. With Win 10 I run the operating system on the M.2 but have relocated all the documents (Docs, Music, Video, Pics etc) to the SSD.

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Happy to report that I installed RAM & Samsung EVO 870 250GB 2.5ssd w/o incident (save mounting the ssd with some double sided tape (because the HP HD cage was designed poorly with the bracket in the way of correct positioning for power&SATA inputs of the SSD). Actually took only a few minutes after blowing out 14 months of dust bunnies, (no doubt exacerbated by vapors from my vaping in my office) with a half can of dust off.

RAM booted up immediately and is running at same clocks and speed as before, now in dual channel; ram utilization on fresh boot has gone from around 30% to about 9%. Moved desktop and most of the (IMO garbage) Edge One Drive to the new SSD. I do have about 25GB of an old PC’s archived files M.2 (C-drive) that I am having a hard time trying, how to figure out, migration to new SSD.

Computer is now working great, much faster! I think I made the right choice and saved some money over ordering a new pair of larger capacity/faster RAM, with the purchase of a single identical 8GB stick to the original. (Especially since the HP motherboard doesn’t support XMP technology).

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