Pavilion 15 Ram Issues

[Elliott-47]

Hi, 

About 18 months ago, I bought a freedos HP laptop from an online store. I got  the package and installed the windows 10 pro using a USB drive. After installing the os, I installed the drivers. And started using my laptop.

After finishing installations, I opened the task manager to check ram usage and saw that the 2.1Gb of ram was missing. After checking the other tabs I found out that the amd radeon vega 10 gpu says that there are 2 gb dedicated memory for the gpu. I'm not sure if that is where the 2 Gb of ram is. I searched for it on the internet and saw that there were others who has experienced the similar situation and some said that it was normal due to the installed amd graphic proccessor. But I havent found an official explanation for it. And also the Seller didnt mention about that when I'm purchasing the product. Why is it happening and if it is how it is shouldnt the seller have mentioned this? 

I want to list and share some of my questions with you, and before that I just wanted to give a general overview about the situation, and I'll add the specifications with some other screenshots to the end.

1 - Game performance is low

I know that I don't have a very high end, high performance gaming computer but, I was hoping to play some known games like GTA V, Pubg etc. I saw people running these games with lower amounts of ram (which is 4gb) on the internet and even though my 2 GB of ram is missing, I thought I should be able to play these games with 5.9 gb of ram. Game performance increased after updating bios and gpu drivers but again my ram usage during the game seems so much to me when I compare it to the ones in the youtube videos. Which their cpu and gpu doesnt better than mines.  My question is, is there something wrong with my computer other than having low amount of ram? 

2 - Upgrading RAM

I'm aware that even 8Gb of ram isn't enough for average gaming, and I was considering upgrading ram even before I'm purchasing. My question is, does dual channel mode makes so much difference? I'm in between purchasing 1x16 Gb RAM and 2x8Gb of ram.

In the first scenario I will have

16 + 4 = 20 Gb of total installed ram (no dual channel)

1x4 Gb of ram removed and need to be sold. 

And in the second, I will have

8 + 8 = 16Gb of total installed ram (Dual Channel)

2x4 Gb of ram removed and need to be sold.

Purchasing two 8gb of ram is a bit costly than purchasing one 16. And also at the end of the day I will have more amount of storage and only one older ram to be sold. Most people says that 16 gb of ram is enough for most games today, and 8+8 is more efficient but will it be always like this. Will there be any time soon where 16 Gb of ram isnt enough and having dual channel doesn't necessary where the 20 Gb of ram is enough in terms of the required amount? I'm wondering your opinions about this.

3 - Warranty 

I dont have a HP service in the city I live and I'm wondering if I can do the installation by myself? If everythings goes well would it make any problem with warranty?   

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

HP released this document a while back, which explains the memory shortage.

Your notebook's model series is on the list.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06526774

This seems to only apply to models with AMD Athlon/Ryzen 3xxx processors, such as your model.

Info on Microsoft PlayReady.

https://www.microsoft.com/playready/overview/

Your notebook can support up to 2 x 16 GB of memory.

Below is the link to the service manual, where you can find the memory upgrade and memory removal and replacement procedure.

Maintenance and Service Guide HP Pavilion Gaming 15 Laptop PC

I would add another 16 GB memory chip to the PC.

Someday, you can add a second one and max out the memory to 32 GB.

I believe that some of that memory is going to be 'eaten up' by the graphics adapter too.

According to chapter 5 of the service manual, installing memory, hard drives or SSD's is a customer-authorized procedure.

So, you shouldn't void the warranty unless you break something in the process of doing the upgrades.

Bear in mind that if you ever need to send your notebook in for warranty repairs, you must return it to its original configuration before sending it to HP.