SSD & RAM Upgrade for Omen 15

[ProfessorKaos]

I have a HP OMEN 15 laptop, purchased in 2017, with the following installed:

Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Intel i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2808 MHz (7th Gen as far as I know?) 

8GB RAM, SODIMM, 2400MHz, DDR4, (Samsung)

1TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD

128 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD (Samsung)

I'm hoping to upgrade the existing RAM to 16GB (8GB x 2) replacing the current 8GB module and adding another 8GB.

- Would the replacements have to have the same SODIMM form factor?

- Can I go to 3200MHz? I read somewhere that the clock speed of the RAM shouldn't go above the speed that the laptop's motherboard supports, but I couldn't find any information regarding what the max speed the motherboard in question supports. Maybe the figure above (2808 MHz) is what I've been looking for? As you can tell I'm not that well up on this sort of thing!

- Might any of you have suggestions for good quality, up to date, options for replacing the RAM modules (preferably Samsung as that's what's in there, but if there's something better out there I'm open to that?

I'm also looking to upgrade the SSD.

- Might anyone know what is the maximum capacity SSD that would be compatible with my laptop?

- Any suggestions for best available most up to date options? Again it's a Samsung that's in there at the moment?

Finally, if anyone has recommendations for easy to follow instructions for getting what's on the SSD (Windows OS and various software) transferred onto the replacement SSD.

Any help with the above would be much appreciated.

[banhien]

@ProfessorKaos 

The specs of your machine is

           https://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c05545303

 1. RAM: It has 8 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB) (and you say it is from Samsung). All DDR4 RAM sticks for notebooks use SAME physical size. You can upgrade to 16GB by adding same existing RAM. You can install 3200MHz RAM but it may not work or automatically downgrade to 2400MHz

2. STORAGE: It has 128 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD now, you can upgrade to 1TB or 2TB uing compatible M.2 NVMe SSD such as   https://www.samsung.com/au/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/970-evo-plus-nvme-m-2-ssd-1tb-mz-v7s1t0bw/

The best option to transfer old HDD/SSD to new HDD/SSD is to clone old to new, that will save us a lot of time and 99% work (I used to do that up to 12 times a year with 100% worked). There are few free clone software around such as

                   https://www.techrepublic.com/article/five-free-and-reliable-cloning-tools/

and how:

                   https://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/clone-resource/clone-m2-ssd-with-only-one-slot.html

Regards.

[ProfessorKaos]

Thanks for your comments, Banhien, which have been helpful. One thing I'm not quite clear about though...

From what I have read, it is possible to replace existing RAM with a RAM chip, or chips, that have a faster clock speed, but you shouldn't use a chip that has a faster speed than the speed of your CPU.  I think I managed to find the information on CPU speed for my particular machine:

Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz

The speed is expressed in GHz not MHz, but I think 2.8GHz is = 2800 MHz. That means, if I've understood it correctly, that if I'm upgrading the RAM, I should make sure to get chips with a speed of no more than 2800MHz.  As far as I know, the closest speed available to that, in DDR4 RAM, is 2666MHz (the next speed up from that being 3200MHz? ) As you mentioned, if I put in 3200MHz chips they might not work at all, or would only work at reduced speed (2400MHz or 2800MHz because of the CPU clock restriction?)

Based on all that, I think I can replace the existing RAM chips with new chips that work at 2666MHz, and they will be able to function at that faster speed. I wouldn't get the benefit of 3200MHz, so no point in paying extra for those.  Have I got it. or have I misunderstood?

[banhien]

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@ProfessorKaos wrote:

... The speed is expressed in GHz not MHz, but I think 2.8GHz is = 2800 MHz. 

speed (2400MHz or 2800MHz because of the CPU clock restriction?)

---

@ProfessorKaos 

Well, I don't know where we get GHz RAM. Did you read its specs ?

Regards.

[ProfessorKaos]

Hi,

I don't think I talked about RAM in terms of GHz.

I got the information about the CPU by going into:- About your PC - System Settings - Device Specs (see below)

You'll see that the CPU is indicated as operating at 2.80 GHz.

My core point is that from what I've read, it appears that you can replace existing RAM chips, with RAM that has a faster clock speed, and that will speed up your system, but you shouldn't use a chip that has a faster speed than the speed of your CPU. As far as I understand it from the above the CPU in my machine operates at 2.80GHz.   I converted the GHz figure to MHz so that I was comparing like for like. All the other figures I mentioned were in MHz. 

So I can get new RAM chips but they can't have a faster speed than 2800MHz?

Like I said previously I don't know a lot about computers and that's why I'm looking for someone to confirm that my thinking is correct or not.