HP Pavilion 15-ec2008ca Gaming laptop RAM Upgrade

[Reptileskin]

Hi, I just purchased the HP Pavilion 15-ec2008ca Gaming laptop - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650.

This laptop comes with 2x4gb DDR4 3200mhz and I would like to upgrade that amount of ram.

I checked the maintenance and service guide and I saw the following infos that is a bit unclear to me:

Two SODIMM slots, customer accessible/upgradeable
DDR4-2400 dual channel support (DDR4-3200 bridge to DDR4-2666, DDR4-2666 downgrade to
DDR4-2400)

Can anyone confirm that 2666 will run in it ?

I have a 16gb stick of 2666 at home and would only have to buy another one to max my ram to 32gb.

Do you have to purchase 3200mhz that would ultimately run at 2400 ? or 2666mhz and 2400mhz sticks will also be compatible? As I said, I already have a 16gb stick of 2666mhz so if it is compatible, that would be an economy.

Thanks !

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The service manual on the support page is for the older models in the series with the Ryzen 3xxx processors.

Your notebook's processor runs the memory at 3200 MHz.

You can read this discussion for my opinion on the matter.

Solved: Re: Ram compatibility - HP Support Community - 8252735

[Reptileskin]

Thanks. Also I have read a lot of people mentioning that XMP/DCOP had to be set in the bios and that HP blocked this option for users.  Will i have to do that? Should i purchased the ram directly from HP to be sure it will run at 3200mhz or any 3200 ram online should work?

Thanks again.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

That is correct. 

You will not be able to adjust the timing specs in the BIOS, which is why I don't recommend buying gaming memory, since it usually has faster timings and may or may not work.

The standard Crucial 16 GB DDR4-3200 memory should work fine (the chips with the green circuit boards).

Crucial 16GB DDR4-3200 SODIMM | CT16G4SFRA32A | Crucial.com

[Reptileskin]

Thanks a lot !

One last question if you don't mind. I am stil debating between purchasing 16gb to get 16+4 or purchasing 2x8.

The 16gb stick would cost about the same but will easier to upgrade to 32gb if it becomes necessary. 

Is 16gb in dual channel a lot better than 4 + 16?

Thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Anytime.

If you eventually plan on maxing out the memory, buy the 16 GB chip.

20 GB running in single channel mode would probably be a little bit better than running 2 x 8 GB in dual channel mode.

RAM Performance Benchmark: Single-Channel vs. Dual-Channel - Does It Matter? | GamersNexus - Gaming ...

Otherwise, you will be wasting your money on 2 x 8 GB chips that you would have to remove again, like you will be doing with the 2 x 4 GB.

Once is enough.