Double your RAM – This Method Actually Works!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,547 words · ~7 min read
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RAM prices have been absolutely bonkers for the last year and it looks like we
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still have months to go before they cool down fortunately in the meantime you can
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simply go to downloadmoreram.com and install as much as you need
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all without spending it
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okay most of you probably saw that coming but
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researching how to increase your RAM
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actually does bring up a lot of bullcrap
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advice from guys like this who tell you to clean your fans with baking flour
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and then laugh at you when it blows up in your face
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so today's video is all about cutting through the nonsense with a red hot
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knife of real world pro tips to help you get the right memory upgrade for less
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mula
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origin pc offers beautiful custom desktops high performance laptops and
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lifetime 24 7 tech support they only use high quality products like samsung's 960
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pro m.2 ssds and you can visit origin pc
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today at the link below for a limited time deal if you google double your RAM for free
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the most common solutions you'll find are to open up Windows advanced
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performance options and increase what's called virtual memory
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now RAM is accessed in pages or chunks
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of memory that are read and written as a whole so the theory here is that because
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many of these pages don't change for long periods of time or even at all once
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the operating system is finished loading they can be moved off of your super fast
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RAM and then on to your way way slower
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virtual memory that's stored on your SSD freeing your RAM up to kick-ass and two
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bubble gums the problem is that you're not actually
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increasing your system's physical memory you're just allocating more of the
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storage so that SSD or even a hard drive
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to act like memory this is designed to prevent programs from crashing due to
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low memory errors but these devices are far too slow to be
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an actual solution and your computer should be set to manage these settings
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automatically anyway we recommend leaving them alone
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another trick is memory compression which takes those infrequently called
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pages and spends some CPU resources on shrinking them down like a zip file so
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that they don't occupy as much RAM this is actually how old software like
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RAM doubler worked so the good news here is that it's not
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bs and if you're using a recent pc or mac
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then your computer already does it automatically
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and the bad news is that other than running a hypervisor like vmware's esxi
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and then a virtualized os under it third-party apps that do this are no
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longer available if you're a Windows 7 holdout for example
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the next common tip is to use a RAM cleaner program
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these work by placing a heavy demand on the RAM prompting the system to push
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existing memory pages to virtual memory and to discard inactive ones
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but number one if you happen to relaunch
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a program that was previously cached but inactive you're gonna have to wait for
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it to completely load again and two a
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lot of the pages are just going to move back to physical memory once you call on
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them anyway you'd be better off to do some good old-fashioned housekeeping
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take a look at the programs that are set to launch on startup on your system and
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make sure that there are no memory hungry apps that you barely ever use
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choking your supply finally you might come across
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suggestions that you overclock your RAM
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look take it from me this is generally not worth it yes you can make the rent
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that you have marginally faster but you're opening yourself up to
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troubleshooting hell if your memory isn't 100 stable and you're not actually
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really fixing the bottleneck which is the slow loading of data from your main
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system storage into the RAM leading us finally to the surefire one
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tech tip to rule them all solution for increasing your RAM
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i hate to do this to you guys but remember last time when the way to
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double your internet speed this method really works was to
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pay for faster internet bonded internet is faster but it is not free
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well the solution here is to just buy more
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RAM but wait hold on this video wasn't totally pointless we can help you save a
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few bucks tip number one is to buy used
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RAM if second hand makes you nervous remember that many memory manufacturers
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offer limited lifetime warranties meaning that if you buy on ebay and it
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doesn't work and for whatever reason ebay and paypal's own protection
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mechanisms fail you you may still be able to get it replaced for free except
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for maybe the return shipping cost and you're probably thinking well hold
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on don't you have to be the original purchaser
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actually the answer is that depends not every company includes that
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stipulation in their warranty policy and even some of the ones we do like
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kingston and Corsair confirmed when we reached out to them that they often
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waive this requirement along with the one for proof of purchase in favor of
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providing better customer service so as long as your dim still has the genuine
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serial number stickers on it there's a good chance you could get it replaced
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and why stop at desktop RAM small outline or so dims from an old laptop
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can be repurposed using inexpensive adapters like the ones we used in this
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video one word of caution though when you're buying used is to look out for system
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specific RAM this is RAM that if you look up the part number you'll find is
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guaranteed to work with one or usually a
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small handful of specific systems it
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usually costs more anyway because it's got this extra stage of validation but
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if you do find a good deal on it just beware there's a chance it'll work
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but it's also possible that it won't be stable or straight up won't work in a
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system that it wasn't designed for as for those of you who insist on buying
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new it's trickier to come up with tips for you we had kind of hoped that historical
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data might reveal a time of the year when RAM is cheaper or some kind of
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consistent pattern in how the launch of a new technology like the upcoming ddr5
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might affect the price of the existing technology
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but the launch of ddr4 did not spur a
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mass liquidation of ddr3 stock because the chipsets and cpus that accompanied
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ddr4 didn't bring enough of a performance jump to compel the average
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mainstream user to upgrade to the new platform
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so if you were itching for a memory upgrade at the end of 2014 you may
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actually have been better off to just go for it rather than wait around for
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prices to fall and this is something that may happen again with ddr5 which is
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slated for release sometime in the next couple of years so
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the unfortunate reality is that there are many forces at play that influence
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the price of commodity desktop memory modules including surging demand for low
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power dram for smartphones depressed yields due to manufacturers recently
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switching their process nodes to use smaller lithography or even just plain
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old bad luck so ultimately you're left
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with two options playing the market monitoring dram
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exchange and snapping up bushels of sticks the moment the price dips then
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flipping them when it goes up or
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just bucking up and buying the RAM you need when you need it
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you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks you can see when your
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try it out for free for 30 days over at freshbooks.com tech tips just remember
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to enter tech tips in the how did you hear about us section actually Linus
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tech tips but whatever i'm sure they'll get the point so thanks for watching guys if this
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video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that
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like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured i guess it'll just be RAM in the video
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description also link down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like
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this one and our community forum which you should totally join