What type of mother board is in my pavillion?

[pearljam18259]

I mainly want to know what type of motherboard is in this laptop. I ultimately am wanting to know what type of ram to upgrade with. I know right now it has 2 8GB ddr4-2133 sodimms in it, but dont know if i would have to stick with the speed of 2133 or not. Also up to what speed of ddr4 does my motherboard support?

Additionally, I would like to know if it is possible to upgrade my laptop with an ssd instead of an hdd. I mean would that even be feasible? If so, what would be some specs to look for when buying a possible ssd upgrade so that it would be compatible?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You can replace the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SATA SSD.

The product specs indicate that your PC comes with the maximum amount of memory supported (2 x 8 GB).

HP Pavilion - 15-au147cl Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

DDR4-2100 memory is pretty hard to find so most folks that can upgrade the memory on notebooks with the Intel i7-7500U processors use either DDR4-2400 or DDR4-2666 MHz memory.

No matter what speed DDR4 memory you install, be it 2400, 2666 or 3200 MHz the memory is limited to the fastest speed your notebook's processor can run the memory at which is 2133 MHz.

Below is the link to the service manual where you can find the memory upgrade info.

HP Pavilion Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide

Only the notebooks that came with M.2 SATA SSD's from the factory have M.2 slots, so that info is not applicable to your notebook.

[pearljam18259]

Thank you for quick reaponse! So for the ram you are saying that i could even install one with the max ddr4 speed of 3200?

Edit: i see you mentioned that I can use 3200...

And for the ssd, are you saying that I can install any 2.5 inch ssd? My main concern is the different type of sata connectors that come with these ssd's. I know alot of them say sata III or sata 3. Is it ok for me to use an ssd with say a sata III or any other type of sata for that matter?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

That is correct, but as I posted above according to the service manual your notebook has the maximum amount of memory installed, so there is no point in changing out 2 x 8 GB of DDR4-2133 memory for 2 x 8 GB of DDR4-3200 memory.

The DDR4-3200 memory is only going to run at 2133 MHz anyway.

Your notebook has a standard SATA 3 notebook hard drive connector, so any 2.5" SSD on the market today should work fine.

Look into the Crucial MX500 or the Western Digital Blue 2.5" SSD's in a drive capacity that fits your needs and budget.

If you want to take a gamble on installing 2 x 16 GB of memory, run this report first to confirm that it is even possible to install that much memory...

1. In the search box, search for cmd and click Run as administrator.

This will open the command prompt.

2. Once command prompt is opened, type wmic memphysical get maxcapacityEx and hit enter.

There, it will show the maximum RAM capacity your PC's motherboard can support.

The capacity is shown as Kilobytes, so you have to convert it to Gigabytes by dividing the number provided in the report by 1,048,576.

[pearljam18259]

Interestingly enough it says my motherboard slots can handle up to 33.5 gb! Not sure how I feel about pushing it though...

As for the drive, could I use a sata I or sata II as well as a sata III?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You won't find any SATA II SSD's on the market today.

I don't believe SATA I SSD's ever existed.

90% of them have always been SATA III.

[pearljam18259]

Is there anyway you can identify my motherboard? I would like to see what it says about how much ram I can actually install given that hp says 16GB and windows says 32GB...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Unfortunately, that would not be possible,

In theory the notebook should support 32 GB of memory.

You'll have to decide what you want to do.

You can always buy one 16 GB memory chip, remove one of the 8 GB chips and if the notebook boots up, reports 24 GB of memory and works fine, then you can buy the second 16 GB memory chip.

This should be a compatible 16 GB memory chip if your notebook supports 32 GB of memory.

Crucial 16GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM | CT16G4SFD824A | Crucial.com