RAM idiocy question

[hermitical]

My heads frazzled so what should be easy enough for me to search and get an answer I'm hoping some kind soul will come to my aid on here.

Bottom of the barrel work laptop with 4Gb of RAM is really struggling. I asked about adding some and was handed a stick that someone had taken out of their old one.
Just want to make sure there are no obvious issues with me popping it into the spare slot, I mean all the specs look the same so I guess all good, just wanted someone who might have done it before to say "go on fella, what are you worried about"

Current:

Found in someone's bag:

 

[Saul Goodman]

Theoretically, RAM should be matched. but it'll probably work, although it won't be optimal. You might have to adjust the timings in the BIOS, but probably not.

 

[platinumsage]

HP don’t even make RAM so they could actually be identical Samsung sticks

 

[hermitical]

Cheers folks

Theoretically, RAM should be matched. but it'll probably work, although it won't be optimal. You might have to adjust the timings in the BIOS, but probably not.

So it's not just the spec, it's the brand that should be the same? Adjust the timings, gonna have to check out what this is about?

 

[MBV]

just plonk it in.

 

[prunus]

Cheers folks


So it's not just the spec, it's the brand that should be the same? Adjust the timings, gonna have to check out what this is about?

You’ll be just fine, the importance of matching paired RAM has declined to close to zero for most applications with modern motherboards; certainly anyway any tiny disbenefit you might get from not being able to (theoretically) run dual channel mode is going to be vastly outweighed by the benefit of doubling from 4G to 8G.

You won’t have to mess about with timings or anything with those two DIMMS.

 

[two sheds]

worth backing stuff up first?

 

[prunus]

worth backing stuff up first?

Well, everything should always be backed up all the time, and it’s certainly not bad practice to take a backup before doing anything to a computer, even updating software, so I can’t say no, but also I can say I’ve whipped open and stuffed extra into or generally fiddled about with the RAM in more computers than I can recall without a second thought. Assuming it’s the type of laptop which makes it easy to get to the RAM slots with a dedicated hatch or similar then if it was me I probably wouldn’t bother. But yes you should back up first

Do shut it down properly and earth yourself on a handy radiator pipe for good measure.

 

[WouldBe]

Well, everything should always be backed up all the time, and it’s certainly not bad practice to take a backup before doing anything to a computer, even updating software, so I can’t say no, but also I can say I’ve whipped open and stuffed extra into or generally fiddled about with the RAM in more computers than I can recall without a second thought. Assuming it’s the type of laptop which makes it easy to get to the RAM slots with a dedicated hatch or similar then if it was me I probably wouldn’t bother. But yes you should back up first

Do shut it down properly and earth yourself on a handy radiator pipe for good measure.

Doing it on the draining board is quite handy for making sure things are grounded.

 

[hermitical]

I'll try and remember to make sure the draining board is dry

Thanks folks!

 

[WouldBe]

I'll try and remember to make sure the draining board is dry

Thanks folks!

That would help.