Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 32GB of RAM

[Sonic007]

I was wondering if anyone has tried the newer 16G DDR3 sticks in this laptop. I find the laptop is to slow for me and would like to max out the ram before getting a SSD and doing a clean Windows X install. My research has only showed them working with Intel products. Intel itself hasn't officially stated that they work. My guess is because they go against JEDEC standards.

Key System info:
Windows X Pro 64bit
CPU: AMD A6-5350M APU
8GB RAM

Udpate:

The RAM I'm curious about are these three. They have been used on systems where the manufacture claims the system max is 16GB, this is double what the manufacture says will work; I am asking for clarification here on Tom's hardware. They are the only 16GB sticks that I'm aware of. If anyone has experience with other 16GB DDR3 laptop RAM feel free to share your information.

Intelligent Memory
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2894509/want-32gb-of-ram-in-your-laptop-or-nuc-you-can-finally-do-it.html

Crucial and Mushkin
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007609%20601190332%20600567143

 

[therickaman]

If you give me an hour or so, I will open mine up and tell you. Note that I have a thinkpad edge 540, and mine is maxed on ram. I am pretty sure I used ddr3 16 gig sticks. I'll get back to you asap.

 

[therickaman]

Sonic007,

I'm unsure what type of "newer 16G DDR3" you're referring to. The Thinkpad Edge E545 can only support a maximum of 16 GB of DDR3 SODIMM. How much memory do you currently have installed in the laptop?

I believe your laptop is very similar to the laptop I own, which is the thinkpad edge e540. If your computer is like mine, you may have a M.2 slot open. On the computer I have, customers could choose to get a wireless N card as an upgrade. If you didn't opt for this upgrade then the computer came with an empty slot. That empty slot, although very small, could support a SSD. At the time when I bought my SSD for the empty slot, the largest capacity I could find was 64 GB. The model number of the SSD that I put into that slot is TS64GMTS400.

I've looked over the hardware manual for your machine and I can't tell if you have one or not. I think you do, but I'm not sure. If you indeed do have this slot that I speak of, then you can actually set it up to be the boot drive for your machine although the SSD is small. This will give two hard drives within the laptop, and that was quite a boost for the speed in my computer.

Just curious, did you repartition your hard drive from the factory? If so, I seem to recall reading that the hard drive should be partitioned so that the first partition will act as a data cache. This could slow you down if you don't have it configured correctly.

You say that the laptop is slow. During what type of work do you experience this slowdown? Is it just during normal surfing the web or is it when more intensive programs are running? It should be noted that lenovo is notorious for adding bloatware to the factory windows install. I haven't used windows in quite awhile (I use linux) but I remember that my wife's thinkpad had slowdown issues due to the software installed by lenovo. Also, it was tough to remove all this software as well.

Anyway, perhaps I can help you more if I knew more about your specific issues with speed. I can say honestly that speed has never been a big deal with this machine for me and I use it for solving very intense mathematics problems.

 

[Sonic007]

I updated the question to reflect how much RAM I have.

"I believe your laptop is very similar to the laptop I own, which is the thinkpad edge e540. If your computer is like mine, you may have a M.2 slot open. On the computer I have, customers could choose to get a wireless N card as an upgrade. If you didn't opt for this upgrade then the computer came with an empty slot. That empty slot, although very small, could support a SSD. At the time when I bought my SSD for the empty slot, the largest capacity I could find was 64 GB. The model number of the SSD that I put into that slot is TS64GMTS400."

I'm not sure myself I will try to find out this evening, unless having this upgrade would mean that I wouldn't be able to use the internet wireless. If that is the case then I have it, because I'm connected to WIFI right now.

"I've looked over the hardware manual for your machine and I can't tell if you have one or not. I think you do, but I'm not sure. If you indeed do have this slot that I speak of, then you can actually set it up to be the boot drive for your machine although the SSD is small. This will give two hard drives within the laptop, and that was quite a boost for the speed in my computer."

Where is this slot, is it under the same panel I remove to add RAM?

"Just curious, did you repartition your hard drive from the factory? If so, I seem to recall reading that the hard drive should be partitioned so that the first partition will act as a data cache. This could slow you down if you don't have it configured correctly."

No I never did anything to the HDD.

"You say that the laptop is slow. During what type of work do you experience this slowdown? Is it just during normal surfing the web or is it when more intensive programs are running? It should be noted that lenovo is notorious for adding bloatware to the factory windows install. I haven't used windows in quite awhile (I use linux) but I remember that my wife's thinkpad had slowdown issues due to the software installed by lenovo. Also, it was tough to remove all this software as well."

This is part of the issue as well. I find it is slow at everything. I mostly use it to look up information, youtube, and I try to game on it. Even very simple/old games gives this laptop a hard time, I also have issues with video tearing. I'd love to use Linux, but it's a Windows world unfortunately.I have removed some of the bloatware; mostly software I know I would never use. Some of it I haven't reviewed. Another issue is I need to clean the registry. I often download software, use it for a few days to a few months then delete it and never use it again. I use Opera browser. I don't want to use Firefox even though I know Opera is based on Firefox. The main games I've been trying to play are Sunrider Mask of Arcadius, and Grid. Grid is playable, but randomly BSODs.

 

[therickaman]

Sonic007,

If your computer is like mine, then no you would not have to pick between wifi and using this slot that I speak of. The slot would be under the panel that you take off when you need to add or remove ram. The slot on mine is close to the center of the laptop. Again, on my computer there are two panels that can be taken off. The slot is very close to the second panel that doesn't need to be removed to make changes to the ram. Let me know if you have this free slot, because if you do it will greatly help you out...even if you do end up having to reinstall windows, having a SSD in that slot will make your laptop fly if you move the windows install to the SSD so as to boot from it and not the HDD.

With me moving my install of windows from HDD from factory to the SSD (which you can install with or without the slot I've discussed above), I could actually boot a new install of windows 10 in less than ten seconds. Of course, this was after I setup fast boot and UEFI booting within the bios.

Regardless of whether you have the empty slot that I do or not, you should remove the panels and do a simple compressed air cleaning...for best effect you should go further than that and remove the keyboard and clean under it. Heat caused by poor air flow can cause CPU throttling and hence a slowdown.

I have an idea on how to check to see if it is a hardware vs. software issue. Although, I'm almost certain it is software related. Do you happen to have a USB thumb drive with at least 2 gig of space that you don't care about being formatted? The process I describe will not change any settings on your windows machine, and you'll be able to try linux. This will kill two birds with one stone since you said you'd like to try it. Go to this link and download Ubuntu 16.04.02: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Once downloaded, download and install Rufus USB installer at this link: https://rufus.akeo.ie/ Once you've done so, insert your USB thumb drive, and open RUFUS. Beside the "Create Bootable disk using" ensure that ISO Image is selected, then click the disk beside it. Navigate to the Ubuntu file that you downloaded before rufus and select it. Now, at the bottom hit start and wait until done. Reboot your computer, and press F12 repeatedly until the BOOT menu appears. Select USB from the menu and you will now boot into Ubuntu using your USB stick. Whenever anything comes up, make sure to click "Try Ubuntu without installing".

Congrats, you're now using a linux distribution called Ubuntu. Look around and play for awhile. Specifically, see if it is as slow as windows was. Click on the upside down looking triangle in the top right hand corner of the screen to connect to a wireless network. Then, click on the firefox icon on the left and surf the web, see if you have the same issues with speed. Once you're done looking around and playing with linux (which you said you'd like to try) shutdown the computer and remove the USB and at next boot you will boot back into Windows as normal.

If Ubuntu didn't have the same issues with speed and video then it's certainly a windows problem that should be fixed completely without additional hardware by simply cleaning up windows. If you experience video tearing (try putting a DVD movie into the CD-rom while Ubuntu is loaded from USB), then maybe you're having some issues with the video card or intel integrated graphics which could explain the general slowdown. It could also be the HDD, test this by doing a read/write test and compare to speeds of the HDD on the factory specs. Going further, if you experience slowdown and you haven't determined cause yet, then perhaps the cpu or ram is starting to fail. You can test CPU stability and RAM speed by putting them under stress test programs available online.

Rick

 

[Sonic007]

That's funny I'm a Rick also. I didn't see the slot you were talking about. I did clean it up, I last cleaned it right before winter came. It was way dustier than I thought, but I have been leaving it on lately. Actually I wasn't clear in my Linux comment. I've used Linux distros before. I like them, just as far as the recreation side of my laptop use goes, it's predominately playing old windows and dos games. I don't know how to do that in Linux, then there are the compatibility issues. When I used it I found it faster than windows, but it still had issues. This APU has a turbo feature (like the i series CPUs) , and I find it's performance jittery, also I think there was some bottling issues with Linux due to being ran off a USB. I've never watched video in Linux. Now that you mentioned it, I think the issue with the video tearing is the video card. It's an intermittent issue. Usually with some game cut scenes, and with youtube. The video car is only rated for 720P playback so it is very weak. I think why I'm so frustrated is because there are hardware and software issues. last time I tested the RAM it tested good. I'm just lost at this point. I included a picture of my laptop after I removed the cover. I couldn't get it completely off because one of the screw's head was stripped. I took a picture, but I don't know how to attach it.

 

[therickaman]

Cool. Is your name actually Rick or Ricky? Mine is Ricky, and it's not short for Richard or anything like that...just Ricky. I've been asked so many times if my real name is Richard. I wonder if other Ricky's get that.

Anyway, it took me awhile to respond as I've been pretty busy. I'm at a loss too. I wish I could help you more, but unfortunately I'm at the end of the line 🙁

I completely agree with you about linux and games. Linux does suck in the respect of compatibility. Sometimes you can get lucky and run windows applications in linux through a program called Wine. But even that, IMHO, is a pain in the a$$. That is why I dual boot with windows now. See before two weeks ago, I used linux exclusively because after I deleted my windows recovery partition from my lenovo laptop...I couldn't get windows to install again. Thus, I had to go to linux. I deleted the partition because I thought that lenovo would have provided me with a windows key, but they did not. I didn't fight it too much, because linux did everything I need. Essentially, all I need is to C program and surf the net. Since I program a lot, I sometimes don't even use a desktop environment...and go for bare terminal (also known as a headless state).

Now that I just finished building my own desktop though, I now dual boot with windows 10. I must say, being away for so long, I figured it would suck. Windows 10 is starting to grow on me quite a bit, because now there is a feature that allows me to use Ubuntu terminal as a subsystem within windows. That's perfect for my C code development. I also must say that there are lots of programs that windows can run compared to linux, which is sooooo nice. On the other hand, windows has bitten me in the past few days...I'm having video card issues on the software side and it seems like fixing anything in windows sucks. It's almost like no one has a clue how to fix anything, so you just keep trying until it works...then ask no questions if a miracle happens and it fixes the issue. Windows is nice when it works correctly, windows sucks when it comes to trying to figure out how to fix it. In linux, at least, when I try to fix something...it's easier to track down the cause.

Rick