Ideapad 330S-15ARR ram, ssd upgrade questions

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lightbulbsocket

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Hi. Like the title indicates I'm looking for some advice on my ram and ssd upgrade options for the Lenovo Ideapad 330S laptop I have. Those are my two main questions anyway.

According what I've seen so far Lenovo only offers Nvme drives for this laptop up to 256GB but I'd like to go with a 500GB drive if it's possible. I just don't know how to determine for sure if that's possible. I'm also not clear on whether or not the drive I select has to be "Lenovo certified" for this laptop. I wouldn't think my storage options would be that limited but I don't really follow the world of laptops so I'm not that well informed. So my questions here would be am I locked into a max capacity of 256GB, does it have to be "certified", and if not (hopefully) can anyone make any recommendations in the 500GB range that might have a nice balance between performance and durability\longevity?

I don't really understand my ram upgrade options in this context that well either. I understand so far that 4GB is soldered to the mainboard and that right now I have one upgradeable slot that's populated with a 4GB module. The laptop seems to support a total of 20GB, which I'd like to upgrade it to but Is the asymmetrical nature of that upgrade going to put my ram in single channel mode or does this laptop even work that way? It seems like I should be looking for ram rated at DDR4 2400 PC4-19200 CL=17 based on the listings I've found that are guaranteed to work. Any guidance and recommendations here would be greatly appreciated.

Also if anyone has any recommendations for a good quality external Bluray drive those would be very much appreciated as well.

Edit: would it be worthwhile to upgrade the thermal paste on the APU in this thing? The heatsink\fan is pretty anemic as it is. Does anyone make aftermarket cooling solutions for these types of things?

Thanks for your time and consideration.
 
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RAM: Yes it will work in single channel. I wouldn't worry too much. Very few tasks are affected by a noticeable amount with single vs dual channel. However, running out of RAM is very noticeable. In general more RAM in single channel is far more preferable to less RAM in dual channel.

SSD: The M.2 slot is NVMe (m-key) only. Not B+M key. So no SATA M.2 models. It also appears to be the 2280 form factor only. Which is the most common size.

It also supports 2.5" SATA drives. So, you could add a second SATA SSD or an ole timey spinner.
 

lightbulbsocket

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Interesting. Thanks for your responses.

RAM: If I'd be running in single channel mode at that point, would it be possible to run faster ram in the uprgrade slot to potentially gain back some of the performance loss of running in single channel?

SSD: Sorry if I'm being "dense" but to be clear, I should be fine to run a 500GB NVMe drive as long as it's the proper form factor (M-key, 2280) and I'm not limited to 256GB or a "Lenovo Certified" drive?

I will eventually replace the "old timey spinner" that's in here now with a 2.5" SSD at some point in the future. I'd eventually like to stick the 2.5" in an enclosure and use it as an external drive eventually. Seems like it makes more sense to populate that empty slot though.

Thanks again for the responses!
 
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