help Maximum RAM Capacity for ASUS VivoBook X415EA-EB372WS i3-1115G4

[ViKaiden]

So I have an ASUS VivoBook Laptop that came with 8GB of DDR4-3200mhz RAM (4GB Soldered+4GB Expandable) and I am now looking to upgrade it due to 8GB not being enough any more for the tasks I throw at it. The question I had in mind is this can theoretically support more than the 12GB officially recommended on the ASUS' website as the CPU supports upto a maximum of 64GB, and the motherboard too probably supports more than 12GB which I would like to confirm as I remember seeing another topic being raised on the forums similar to mine where the OP used sysfs to extract the SMBIOS information which in turn revealed his board supported a maximum of 32GB in a similar 14inch ASUS laptop.

Help will be greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

[Eigenvektor]

This site offers up to 32 GB modules for the machine, and claims it is working. I assume they wouldn't if that resulted in a ton of returns: https://www.compuram.biz/memory/asus/notebook/vivobook/series/x415ea/

 

Just be aware that anything beyond 4+4 GB will suffer a bandwidth penalty. If you combine 4 GB with 32 GB, only 8 (4+4) GB will run in dual channel mode. The remaining RAM will run in single channel mode.

[ViKaiden]

4 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

This site offers up to 32 GB modules for the machine, and claims it is working. I assume they wouldn't if that resulted in a ton of returns: https://www.compuram.biz/memory/asus/notebook/vivobook/series/x415ea/

 

Just be aware that anything beyond 4+4 GB will suffer a bandwidth penalty. If you combine 4 GB with 32 GB, only 8 (4+4) GB will run in dual channel mode. The remaining RAM will run in single channel mode.

Thanks a lot for the quick reply and info, I am aware of the bandwidth penalty but feel that the pros outweigh the cons since more RAM in total regardless of whether it's running in Single Channel or Dual Channel mode should be more effective than less RAM running in Dual Channel memory (Correct me if I'm wrong). I am planning on installing a 16GB DDR4-3200 module with similar CAS timings that'll bring the grand total to 20GB. I wonder why the official website only recommends 12GB when more is indeed possible.

[emosun]

8 minutes ago, ViKaiden said:

but feel that the pros outweigh the cons since more RAM in total regardless of whether it's running in Single Channel or Dual Channel mode should be more effective than less RAM running in Dual Channel memory (Correct me if I'm wrong).

it depends on the tasks. if the program doesn't use much ram but needs what ram it DOES use to swap quickly then speed would be priority over amount. But if youre just doing normal computer tasks then 8gb is a low amount and would benefit from being higher at this point

[Eigenvektor]

27 minutes ago, ViKaiden said:

I wonder why the official website only recommends 12GB when more is indeed possible.

They likely simply never bothered to test the machine with more than 12 GB (under the assumption the target audience would never need more).

 

As for speed, it depends. If you run out of RAM, performance will obviously suffer a lot. So more RAM is definitely worthwhile. How much of a penalty there is depends on how bandwidth intensive a specific task is. For example an iGPU generally wants as fast RAM as possible. As far as I can see, the machine has no discrete GPU, so graphics performance might suffer, depending on which part of RAM is used for VRAM.

[ViKaiden]

2 hours ago, emosun said:

it depends on the tasks. if the program doesn't use much ram but needs what ram it DOES use to swap quickly then speed would be priority over amount. But if youre just doing normal computer tasks then 8gb is a low amount and would benefit from being higher at this point

Yeah that's what I thought I don't game much on this Laptop so bandwidth isn't as much of a priority.

[ViKaiden]

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

They likely simply never bothered to test the machine with more than 12 GB (under the assumption the target audience would never need more).

 

As for speed, it depends. If you run out of RAM, performance will obviously suffer a lot. So more RAM is definitely worthwhile. How much of a penalty there is depends on how bandwidth intensive a specific task is. For example an iGPU generally wants as fast RAM as possible. As far as I can see, the machine has no discrete GPU, so graphics performance might suffer, depending on which part of RAM is used for VRAM.

Wouldn't the GPU automatically use the part of the memory that's in Dual Channel mode? For example referencing your 32GB example wouldn't 8GB still be in Dual Channel Memory while the rest is in single channel? Again correct me if I'm wrong. Currently 4GB is allocated to the iGPU.

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, ViKaiden said:

Wouldn't the GPU automatically use the part of the memory that's in Dual Channel mode? For example referencing your 32GB example wouldn't 8GB still be in Dual Channel Memory while the rest is in single channel? Again correct me if I'm wrong. Currently 4GB is allocated to the iGPU.

Yes, 8 out of 36 GB should run in dual channel mode (as long as the system supports flex mode). Whether the iGPU's memory is reserved in memory regions running in dual channel, I have no idea. But I would hope the BIOS/OS is clever enough to do so.