RAM Capacity- Laptop Vendor Contradicts Newegg and Crucial.

I have a brand-new Windows 11 Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15IAU7, type 82RK. The CPU is 12th Generation Intel Core i5-1235U. It has 8GB of soldered-in RAM, DDR4 3200MHz. By checking memory usage, I can already see over 6GB in use, even after deleting bloatware, and I am not doing anything but net surfing or using Word. So 8GB is barely enough!

I called Lenovo support and they told me on the phone I could only use an 8GB RAM set for upgrading by using the 1 available expansion slot. That would give me a total of 16BG RAM. But online scans by both Crucial and Newegg say I could put a 16GB RAM set in the available expansion slot, giving me a total of 24GB.

I am confused by this.

Help (and insight) is appreciated. Thank you.

Chances are the 16 GB memory module would work. Check the return policy before purchasing in case it does not. Note that Windows will suck up more of the available memory even when you add memory. I have a system with 32 GB of RAM, and Windows and the running applications are using 10 GB at present.

Interesting .. Kingston memory says max upgrade is 8Gigs.

https://www.kingston.com/en/memory/s...eapad-3-15iau7

And also as you say Lenovo..

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys...5IAU7_Spec.pdf

Thank you, jdc2000.

fink,

I don't know how you found that Lenovo spec sheet, but thanks for that. Very cool.

No problem. All I did was search google using the info you gave above..

Quote:

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IdeaPad 3 15IAU7, type 82RK

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Well, I took the plunge and did my very first upgrade on a laptop. That case back was pretty stubborn about coming off and I was scared to be too rough, so it took me quite a while to get that thing off with a couple of guitar-pick-style tools. It finally budged, though. I added 16GB of RAM like Crucial said I could, even though Lenovo's tested and approved max was 8GB.

System Info now shows the full 24GB of RAM, 23.7GB usable.

An added bonus is that when you have the RAM chips in multiples of two, the system becomes dual-channel instead of single-channel. That allows the Intel Core i5-1235U CPU to run Iris XE integrated graphics, rather than Intel UHD integrated graphics. I verified the display adapter in Device Manager to be sure. Depending on what I do with the laptop, it might not really make much difference, so we'll see, I guess.

Thanks to everyone for their support! :)