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Upgrading RAM

littlekiwi

littlekiwi

I charge by the hour for anything before noon
Joined
Jan 21, 2012
Messages
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PSE has been a bit glitchy and I’ve changed as many settings as I can. My laptop is approx 7 months old. I currently have 8 GB of RAM and can have a max of 16GB - would you add 4GB this that is semi affordable or save and get 8GB which might be 2-3 months away. The reason I’m umming over the decision is the price of 8 is $160 where as 4 is $80 plus I have to get it installed otherwise my 3 year warranty is void. I’ve previously only ever upgraded outside of warranty periods so haven’t had to worry about voiding my warranty and just asked my good friend who is really tech to do it.
 
littlekiwi said:
PSE has been a bit glitchy and I’ve changed as many settings as I can. My laptop is approx 7 months old. I currently have 8 GB of RAM and can have a max of 16GB - would you add 4GB this that is semi affordable or save and get 8GB which might be 2-3 months away. The reason I’m umming over the decision is the price of 8 is $160 where as 4 is $80 plus I have to get it installed otherwise my 3 year warranty is void. I’ve previously only ever upgraded outside of warranty periods so haven’t had to worry about voiding my warranty and just asked my good friend who is really tech to do it.
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16 is always better than 12. I'd say go for 12 now, and 16 later, but I'm betting it's not an $80 difference to go from 12-16 is it? If it is, go for it! It'd be the same price in the end.
If it's not, I'd deal with it for 2-3 months and get the 16. It will make the laptop last longer in the end, and it's not that far away.
 
@bestcee it is unfortunately down here, the joys of living at the bottom of the world and having very few computer supply places since many have shut down over the last 3-5 years. it’s $80 to go from 8 to 12 and $160 to go from 8 to 16. At the moment I’m thinking save up for 16GB which if I don’t need anything else urgently would probably be March or April before I’d get it, upgrading to 12GB would probably happen in 4-6 weeks.
 
Gosh, when I read this I mentally said " I was always needing more RAM. I'm not alone!!" Hahaha. I upgraded within my price range when my son rebuilt my computer about 2 years ago. I spent about the same, $80 which doubled me. I am still good at this point, so I think it would depend on if you were going to really increase some major programs in the next year or two. I now have a solid state computer so I don't need to upgrade as often, but maybe going with the less expensive option and waiting it out until you upgrade your whole system/laptop?
 
considering this is almost a brand new laptop I probably won’t be upgrading for at least 2 1/2 years so waiting to upgrade the ram to 16GB then isn’t really a viable option. If my previous laptop hadn’t been stolen in April last year it would be 3 years old now - Since I switched from Toshiba to HP I have less need to upgrade before 3-4 years which is a good thing. For all I know PSE might have just been throwing a tantrum while I was scrapping and 8GB might be ok for now.
 
I scrapped with PSE and 8 gb for awhile, like a year to 18 months! I had to be careful about what else was open at the same time. No 5 tab internet browsers, and I couldn't have both Lightroom and PSE open for more than 15 minutes together. Try it, and see how it goes. And check for updates. Sometimes when Windows is updating in the background it eats ram without you realizing it!
 
that gives me hope then @bestcee, I might just be able to hold off upgrading RAM until I get a job (maybe this year.....I hope)
 
I agree with Courtney. I kept track of what situations were causing PSE to crash and did my best to avoid them. When I added RAM, it didn't seem to make that much difference.
 
NancyBeck said:
When I added RAM, it didn't seem to make that much differenc
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That did help me! As soon as I added RAM it was happier. I still crap occasionally on a 16GB RAM laptop that's 5 years old.
Now, that could also be because it went from windows 8 to 10 and that ate more RAM.
 
Here are my laptop specs if anyone else can offer suggestions (FYI I did not have a choice with this laptop as it was the result of an insurance claim last year)

Product name HP Notebook - 15-ay148tx
Microprocessor Intel® Core™ i5-7200U (2.5 GHz, up to 3.1 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores)
Memory, standard 8 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB)
Video graphics AMD Radeon™ R5 M430 Graphics (2 GB DDR3 dedicated)
Hard drive 1 TB 5400 rpm SATA

Currently my hard drive has less than 150GB full so I'm pretty confident that hard drive space is not an issue here
 
So, I agree, your hard drive is likely not the problem.
Does your warranty come with tech support? Or can you call/email Adobe and ask about your computer and PSE15 requirements? Your stats you posted look good enough to Adobe's minimum requirements.
From Adobe's site:
Photoshop Elements 15.0
Windows
  • 1.6GHz or faster processor with SSE2 support
  • 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10
  • 4GB of RAM
  • 5GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation and additional 2GB required to download all optional content)
  • 1024x768 display resolution (at 100% scale factor)
  • Microsoft DirectX 9 or 10 compatible display driver
  • DVD-ROM drive (for installation from DVD)
  • Internet connection required for product activation and content download*
 
Do you have Organizer open at the same time as PSE when scrapping?
 
Thinking it could have been just a one off glitch though I wonder if it was the font that Cheryl uses on her templates that I don’t have that caused the problem but then the 2nd go with Cheryl’s templates this didn’t happen so I’m not sure
 
littlekiwi said:
Thinking it could have been just a one off glitch though I wonder if it was the font that Cheryl uses on her templates that I don’t have that caused the problem but then the 2nd go with Cheryl’s templates this didn’t happen so I’m not sure
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Eh. Computers. Sometimes they have a mind of their own!

Did you download a bunch, or move a bunch of files before the last time? I know you said you are using Backblaze, I wonder if it was competing for the RAM and caused an issue? I know the main fonts Cheryl uses are free, so you could download those if you think that's causing it.
 
Just before I started the glitchy layout I did transfer over approx 100 photos and Backblaze has done its big backup. When this happened I was probably into hour 3 or 4 with this layout so that could have been it. If it was my old Toshiba Laptops this would be way easier to diagnose as they regularly overheated but it’s not a problem now.
 
bestcee said:
That did help me! As soon as I added RAM it was happier. I still crap occasionally on a 16GB RAM laptop that's 5 years old.
Now, that could also be because it went from windows 8 to 10 and that ate more RAM.
Click to expand...

There's my problem, I'm on one of those darn Macs, lol!
 
Honestly now that I’ve done 2 layouts since my PSE issues happened with no problems I’m leaning towards a psd file getting corrupted while I was working rather than a hardware problem like I first thought.
 
littlekiwi said:
Honestly now that I’ve done 2 layouts since my PSE issues happened with no problems I’m leaning towards a psd file getting corrupted while I was working rather than a hardware problem like I first thought.
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I blame computer Gremlins!
I'm so glad it's been working fine for you since then! :cheer
 
littlekiwi said:
Here are my laptop specs if anyone else can offer suggestions (FYI I did not have a choice with this laptop as it was the result of an insurance claim last year)

Product name HP Notebook - 15-ay148tx
Microprocessor Intel® Core™ i5-7200U (2.5 GHz, up to 3.1 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores)
Memory, standard 8 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB)
Video graphics AMD Radeon™ R5 M430 Graphics (2 GB DDR3 dedicated)
Hard drive 1 TB 5400 rpm SATA

Currently my hard drive has less than 150GB full so I'm pretty confident that hard drive space is not an issue here
Click to expand...

I'm so glad things are working better for you now. For the future if you decide to upgrade your RAM you'll want to find out if your laptop will even take an upgrade. Most have 2 slots or banks for RAM and if you have both slots filled they have to be the same size - so both 4 GB chips or both 8 GB chips and so forth. So if I'm reading this correctly (1 x 8 GB) your laptop has 1 slot filled with a 8 GB chip, so if you were to upgrade you'd have to get another 8 GB chip to put in the second slot. You wouldn't be able to buy a 4 GB chip to use with your current 8 GB chip. Hope that helps if you do decide to upgrade your RAM.
 
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