Root Access

Okay, now that the frustration of having to re-open my laptop and replace the RAM I took out (I have no prior experience in this regard) has subsided... I'm not sure if my "question" is even a question anymore (as stupid as this sounds) o_o

Gimme a minute to put my thoughts down (-:

Journeyman Geek

@paracetamol Yup. THAT IS WHAT WE DO HERE....

especially mistakes :D

paracetamol

@djsmiley2kStaysInside More or less the issue :-)

paracetamol

12:36 PM

Here’s a little story.
My dad got me a basic laptop when I started college back in 2018 (‘twas an HP 14-cf0004ne; 4GB RAM, i3-7th gen), from a local computer store.
It was super slow from day-1 (booting, opening files, browsing internet), which was annoying, but at least I was able to get (some) work done on the thing.
As I grew more computer-literate over time, I came to the conclusion a RAM upgrade might help things.
So I ordered a Crucial 8GB DDR4 SODIMM card off of Amazon, and installed it today. I tried booting up the laptop…but it was EVEN slower than before (basically inoperable).

After a spot of googling, I think I found the problem: Me being the genius that I am, ended up ordering wrong kind of card - 2400MT/s instead of the designated 2133 (MHz?) mentioned on HP’s website for my model.
Here’s the interesting/frustrating part: The 4GB RAM card I pulled out of the laptop was a 2666(MHz?) *Samsung* card o____o.
I guess that ended up answering my 2 year-old question about why my (then) brand-new laptop was so slow; it had a 4GB 2600(MHz) card from a different company installed instead of a 4GB-2133 (MHz) card by HP (I assume HP makes their own cards).

But the 8GB card I order and installed was rated 2400MT/s.
Now the problem my not-exactly-computer-literate-brain is seeing is: Why did 8GB 2400MT/s card slow down my laptop way worse than the 4GB 2666(MHz?) card, despite being closer in frequency to the designated 2133(MHz) card that my laptop should have (but doesn’t)?

Disclaimer: I'm not sure how "MT/s" is related to MT/s, or if they're equivalent in any way

Woe is me <Sighs>

Assuming this doesn't sound too stupid after you've read through, I'll probably polish this a bit and post it on the main site (if you think it'll fit) @dj @Journey

Journeyman Geek

Good news? Its not entirely obvious

ram should run at the speed of the slowest ram you have

but some wierd stuff happens when you mix ram speeds...

paracetamol

Journeyman Geek

So - good news?

You're not stupid or cray cray :D

djsmiley2kStaysInside

I suspect the hdd is the cause of the slowness, tho 4Gb certainly won't help.

Journeyman Geek

also ram can be from anywhere... or mixed

My Old DIY PC has an asus motherboard and a mix of Kingston and chinese off brand ram

paracetamol

12:42 PM

@JourneymanGeek That's reassuring, thanks (-:

@djsmiley2kStaysInside It's a 1TB HDD, and yeah...

Journeyman Geek

HP doesn't really make ram, and samsung ram is fine

You might want to try explicitly setting ram speeds to the speed of your slowest ram, then inching up

and test your ram

paracetamol

Noted. So, ideally... I should get an 8GB 2133Mhz card?

Journeyman Geek

uhhh

paracetamol

(2133MHz is the factory-designated one)

Journeyman Geek

"Ideally" matched pairs

or all ram the same

but eh

not critical

paracetamol

12:45 PM

Ah wait, I didn't mention: I'm just using a single RAM slot

So it's either the 4gb card, or the 8gb one

@JourneymanGeek Didn't put in a 4gb and an 8gb side by side

^ If I'm still making sense :-)

Journeyman Geek

hmmm

then you're doing nothing wrong and it should work :D

paracetamol

@JourneymanGeek Wokay, I see! Thanks!

Journeyman Geek

So at this point, stop guessing. Run whatever flavour of memtest people here recommend (I forget what's the good one)... maybe performance test the ram and storage.

paracetamol

@dj You too :-)

@JourneymanGeek Noted, I'll get to it...

So... should I post this on the main site now?

Journeyman Geek

sure

paracetamol

12:49 PM

If you repeat whatever you told me (more-or-less) I'll be glad to accept it :-)

Journeyman Geek

Eh, its not really an answer ;)

and my advice is for mixed ram :)

paracetamol

Well, it was enlightening... so that still counts :-D

Journeyman Geek

One more bit of advice... an SSD, even a cheapish SSD, is the single best performance upgrade you can make these days

even more so than ram

paracetamol

@JourneymanGeek Hmm, never really put too much thought into SSD upgrades, but I'll look into that too...

Burgi

i got one for my dad's laptop, only £15 works like a dream

Journeyman Geek

12:56 PM

0_0

did prices drop that far? 0_0

Burgi

scan.co.uk/products/…

Journeyman Geek

apparently cloudflare thinks I'm dodgy :D

Burgi

@JourneymanGeek it isn't exactly wrong.... ;P

Journeyman Geek

yeah, that's pretty nuts :D

cheaper than chinesium :D

Burgi

it probably is chinesium with a gigabyte logo on it

Journeyman Geek

1:13 PM

I think my chinesium ones were... king dian?

interesting drives, no ram cache, but MLC cause the controller didn't support tlc

Burgi

tender loving care?

so your saying the controller is a bit of a bastard?

paracetamol

0

Q: Tried a RAM upgrade on a slow laptop, but it made things worse

Here’s a little story. My dad got me a basic laptop when I started college back in 2018 (‘twas an HP 14-cf0004ne; 4GB RAM, i3-7th gen), from a local computer store. It was super slow from day-1 (booting, opening files, browsing internet), which was annoying, but at least I was able to get (some) ...

@Journey @dj ^

@Burgi <Shocked>

Burgi

@paracetamol did you clean out the dust?

paracetamol

@Burgi There wasn't much, but I did clean out what I saw...

Burgi

my desktop was throttling me to 333Mhz because the CPU fins were caked in dust

paracetamol

1:20 PM

@Burgi Then again, I didn't take out and clean the heat sink-fan module... which is probably for the best (I've got zero experience with that thing)

@Burgi I don't think it was that bad for me :-P

A very light layer of dust..

Burgi

just get canned air and squirt like crazy

paracetamol

@Burgi Noted, will do the next time I crack open the laptop (-:

Journeyman Geek

@Burgi lol multi level cell vs triple level cell

Burgi

i haven't really looked into the technology of SSDs, i just eye them with suspicion and mistrust and let them get on with their witchcraft

Journeyman Geek

lol

cliff notes - the more "levels" a cell, the cheaper and shittier it is

we're "down" to QLC, with SLC being reserved for enterprise grade SSDs

Burgi

1:27 PM

when i was an engineer we had clients that insisted on having the latest and greatest tech, and that meant SSDs

Journeyman Geek

most consumer stuff is TLC now, with MLC reserved for some more premium models

Burgi

they almost all failed after 4 months

Journeyman Geek

My SSDs outlast the useful lives of the machines they are on :D

Burgi

this was about 10 years ago

Journeyman Geek

uhm

I think my oldest SSD is ... uhhh

Burgi

1:29 PM

they were literally brand new in the consumer space at that point

Journeyman Geek

8 years?

Burgi

it is possible we got a bad batch

Severus Snape

2:51 PM

Good day. I have been wanting to ask a question. It might be already there but I don't remember the "technical term". Could anyone help me? Question : When I download a file using Telegram Web, the file is first saved in a "buffer", after which it gets saved to the disk. The second process can be done again and again. What is this intermediary buffer? I think this type of download happens in Ubuntu site too. I would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.

This is a screenshot. I can click on "Save file" any number of times. Clicking on which downloads the file to my disk.

Burgi

HTML5 has something called LocalStorage, telegram might be saving your downloads into this

effectively its just cache

Severus Snape

Thanks @Burgi I think it's just that. I have never done much HTML but do remember reading about it on SO or SU few months ago.

barlop

6:00 PM

a user has an interesting question here superuser.com/questions/1595331/… i've edited it, do you think it can be reopened?

or would it need further changes?

btw would cloning or imaging software e.g. macrium, make an image without dismounting a partition? and even do so for a system partition? (gotta question the premise0

Aibobot

@barlop volume shadow copy

DavidPostill

@barlop nice edit - reopened

barlop

@Aibobot Thanks , You could post that answer as an answer to that question

Aibobot

naw

not convinced its a really good question :D

also its the wrong question

ah hell, why not. :D

paracetamol

7:01 PM

@Journey @dj @Burgi So I got an answer to the question that seems to clear up the MT/s vs MHz issue (the linked discussion in the Answer, was insightful. Just wanted your opinion: Is anything in that answer painfully wrong/misleading? (Asking because I'm seeing a downvote next to it)

-1

A: Tried a RAM upgrade on a slow laptop, but it made things worse

I don't have enough reputation to comment, so here's an answer: I did some research, and MT/s is not the same as MHZ. MT/s measures the data transfer rate while MHZ is the clock speed. For example, if a card operates at 1200 MHZ, then it also operates at 2400 MT/s, since DDR performs two operatio...

Burgi

its just a bad answer as it doesn't actually answer your problems. if you feel it has value, give it an upvote

paracetamol

7:48 PM

@Burgi I think it helps with the first sub question in my post ("Am I right in assuming MT/s is equivalent to MHz?").

So I'm inclined to give it an upvote, unless the substance of the answer is wrong (which is why I need your opinion on that)

Like I said earlier on in the day (and mentioned in my post), I have next to no experience with this sort of thing, unfortunately :-3

Aibobot

8:11 PM

@paracetamol looking at your question, it feels like there's another issue with the laptop, unrelated to the ram

Ramhound

8:38 PM

I was the one who downvote that answer. It doesn’t answer your question, it just clarified a topic, you were confused about. Super User isn’t a discussion forum. It was a comment, the author recognized this fact, by indicating they could not submit a comment

Honestly, that answer will probably eventually be deleted.

The author of the answer should edit their answer, remove the meta commentary about being unable to submit comments, and answer your question. Just clarifying what you were confused about doesn’t answer your question. As for the reason I won’t simply answer the question, is due to the fact, I suspect a unidentified hardware issue.

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