Laptop Ram

[Sysdemon71]

I have a HP Envy 360 15M-BQ121DX. With that being said, I am looking to upgrade the ram in it from 8gb to 16gb. It calls for DDR4 2400Mhz on the specs. Can I install 3200Mhz in its place? 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, you can install DDR4-3200 CL22 memory in your notebook and it will automatically bridge to 2400 MHz, because that is as fast as your notebook's processor can run the memory at.

Below is the link to the service manual:

NB_MSG_Rockets_1_2_Cons_923498-003 (hp.com)

[Sysdemon71]

My laptop currently has 8Gb of 2400 ram in it. If i add 8 more (16gb total) will it make a difference? 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Adding another 8 GB of memory should make a decent improvement in performance, but if you really want to speed things up, you can either replace the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SATA solid state drive (SSD) or install a M.2 NVMe SSD in the M.2 SSD slot and use the hard drive for storage.

NVMe SSD's are the fastest type drives on the market and chapter 1 of the service manual indicates that NVMe SSD's are supported.

[Sysdemon71]

Sweet. Last question, when i go to clone the HDD drive to NVME or SSD, what software do you use? The HDD in there now is a HGST 1TB HDD. Do I just connect the old drive and new drive to my desktop and clone it that way?  

[Paul_Tikkanen]

If you want to replace the 2.5" drive with a 2.5" SSD, you will need to buy a SATA to USB cable and connect the new hard drive to it in one of your notebook's USB 3 ports.

If you want to install a NVMe SSD, you can just install the NVMe SSD in the empty slot and clone the drive to it.

For cloning software, I only did it once using the free Macrium Reflect software which is no longer free, but you can use it on a 30-day trial period.

Macrium Reflect Home

If you decide to go with that, just install it when you are ready to clone the drives.

One thing to note...if you install a NVMe SSD the notebook will probably always want to boot from the 2.5" drive first and not the SSD, so you may have to remove Windows from the hard drive if that happens.

[Sysdemon71]

Thanks. It might be easier to just install a SSD drive and not worry about the boot order then. Upgrading from a HDD to SSD should provide the better performance all the way around. Currently, my system boots from HDD in about 40 secs. Sometimes though, it takes a bit longer for the icons in the task bar on the bottom to show up. 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

Yes a SATA SSD will help quite a bit. 

It should cut the boot time in half and the overall drive performance will be greatly improved.