[SOLVED] HP Notebook - 15-AY010CA RAM and SSD upgrade question

[Nemesia]

Hi everyone,

Decided to upgrade that HP Notebook 15-AY010CA laptop for my mom instead of buying a new one.

It has 1 RAM slot for PC3-12800 DDR3L-1600 SDRAM. It has a 4GB right now with a 5400RPM HDD and I want to replace it with a 8GB RAM stick and a 256GB SSD.

I really don't want to buy a MX500 and that Crucial 8GB at 60 dollars. What is this cheapest decent RAM and SSD I can put in that laptop?

With a MX500 + Crucial 8GB stick + USB to SATA cable for cloning the drive it's like 140 dollars. Any cheaper stuff you would recommend?

Laptop specs
https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c05214722

 

[Lutfij]

In theory, you can drop in any brand of ram and SSD in the laptop the only question is whether you're removing all forms of quality, reliably and support when you go for no-name hardware. Brands like Crucial, Samsung, SK Hynix will have firmware updates to help improve upon a known or newly discovered issue. Updates to SSD's can also help prolong life and increase performance.

That being said, if you're sure that the laptop has a single slot to accept an stick of ram, you should look for a DDR3L-1600MHz stick of ram rated to run at 1.35v. Brand is your choice.

Also, don't clone, reinstall the OS! Go through all the threads on the forums of people doing a clone on their OS/SSD, the answer is "you should've installed the OS from scratch". Prior to your hardware updates, please make sure you're on the latest BIOS update for the laptop.

 

[Nemesia]

In theory, you can drop in any brand of ram and SSD in the laptop the only question is whether you're removing all forms of quality, reliably and support when you go for no-name hardware. Brands like Crucial, Samsung, SK Hynix will have firmware updates to help improve upon a known or newly discovered issue. Updates to SSD's can also help prolong life and increase performance.

That being said, if you're sure that the laptop has a single slot to accept an stick of ram, you should look for a DDR3L-1600MHz stick of ram rated to run at 1.35v. Brand is your choice.

Also, don't clone, reinstall the OS! Go through all the threads on the forums of people doing a clone on their OS/SSD, the answer is "you should've installed the OS from scratch". Prior to your hardware updates, please make sure you're on the latest BIOS update for the laptop.

My mom would like pretty much to keep everything like it is right now. You sure I can't try the cloning? I keep seeing threads with people successfully using macrium reflect and clone the HDD to SSD. I will still have the HDD with the OS on it if something doesn't work and I can still reinstall the OS If I have to. I just wanted to try the cloning

I assume one of these would work:

https://www.amazon.ca/Patriot-Memory-Ultrabook-PC312800-PSD38G1600L2S/dp/B009WIW9GE/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=PC3L,+12800,+1600-MHz+DDR3L-1600+single+channel+support&qid=1606878916&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.ca/Silicon-Power-8GB-DDR3L-1600MHz-Unbuffered-SODIMM-Laptop/dp/B07L89T9HQ/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=PC3L,+12800,+8gb+1600-MHz+DDR3L-1600+single+channel+support&qid=1606878939&sr=8-15

https://www.amazon.ca/Samsung-origi...gb+1600-MHz+DDR3L-1600&qid=1606879051&sr=8-29

https://www.amazon.ca/1600MHz-PC3-1...gb+1600-MHz+DDR3L-1600&qid=1606879051&sr=8-41

As for the SSD I will probably buy something like this - https://www.amazon.ca/Silicon-Power...4&sr=1-2-12d4272d-8adb-4121-8624-135149aa9081