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I've been on 4GB for the last eight years or so and upgraded to 16GB a couple of months ago and I'm absolutely not seeing any difference worth talking about. I'm sure there are workloads that benefit, but some grandpa level webbrowsing, eh.
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Dec 28, 2023 03:54
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Flipperwaldt posted:I've been on 4GB for the last eight years or so and upgraded to 16GB a couple of months ago and I'm absolutely not seeing any difference worth talking about. I'm sure there are workloads that benefit, but some grandpa level webbrowsing, eh. At this point you're probably CPU-limited, anyway. With an older machine the only thing that is really going to make it feel different is going from an HDD to an SSD.
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Dec 28, 2023 04:07
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Lockback posted:Chrome will actively start compiling pages you haven't visited yet and store in memory as long as you have free memory. It isn't "using" that much RAM, it's free so it's taking it at low priority and will release chunks of it if the OS goes to resize due to another request. So don't use the task manager as a measuring stick because Chrome is happily compiling JavaScript from a website you last visited 6 months ago JUST IN CASE. That makes sense, I have a fairly considerable amount of ram so it has a lot of runway Also on that computer specifically it's probably all useful stuff. I only go to like 6 different places on the Internet lol
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Dec 28, 2023 04:09
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Sashimi posted:I need to help my dad get a new Windows 11 laptop, the most demanding thing it will do is play youtube videos. All I want to know is if 16gb of ram would be overkill, or if 8gb is fine for general web browsing. I have a Lenovo Yoga with 8GB of soldered ram, bought it a year ago. It's not my main machine but for casual couch surfing with 6-8 tabs in Firefox running it's been fine. At this point though, who knows what the future holds. I think modern machines having access to very fast storage (compared to the olden days with spinning HDD's) might help with machines that have lower amounts of RAM. Still, 16GB might be a good bet from this point on. Check out the HP I posted earlier. It's a solid amount of hardware for the price. Mental Hospitality fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 06:44
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With 16gb being the norm its making me contemplate returning the Lenovo Slim 5 14 I just picked up as I realized it has 16gb soldered thinking that we are not that far from 32gb being the norm for gaming.
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Dec 28, 2023 08:14
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Green Gloves posted:With 16gb being the norm its making me contemplate returning the Lenovo Slim 5 14 I just picked up as I realized it has 16gb soldered thinking that we are not that far from 32gb being the norm for gaming. I have 2x8GB sticks of DDR5 because I upgraded my ASUS A16 to 32GB pretty much first thing.
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Dec 28, 2023 08:45
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Lockback posted:That form factor + GPU is hard to power and cool. Interesting, I would have thought the main limitation would be battery life, but cooling makes sense. When do laptops refresh generally? I see more suitable (for me) variants like one with a 4060 instead of an overkill 4070, but it does not seem available anywhere.
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Dec 28, 2023 08:52
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Flipperwaldt posted:I've been on 4GB for the last eight years or so and upgraded to 16GB a couple of months ago and I'm absolutely not seeing any difference worth talking about. I'm sure there are workloads that benefit, but some grandpa level webbrowsing, eh. You're gonna have to qualify this with the laptop you're running, cpu/memory/type of hard disk, as well as swap file size etc I absolutely can tell the difference between 4 and 8, and 99% of the time 8 and 16
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Dec 28, 2023 08:56
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Hadlock posted:You're gonna have to qualify this with the laptop you're running, cpu/memory/type of hard disk, as well as swap file size etc E: Genuinely not arguing that someone should skimp on ram when buying. Just that I've seen people in this thread say things like 16GB is an absolute minimum for literal years and I'm like 
Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 14:58
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I think it depends on how long you plan on keeping your laptop. My 2017 refresh xps 13 that is still my main laptop has 16gb of ram soldered and I'm glad it doesn't have half that. I think getting 8 GB of ram is penny wise pound foolish. By the time I replace it, I'll have probably had it for 8+ years. If you're buying a laptop with the intent of only keeping it like 2 years, sure get 8 gig of ram. And don't bother wasting money on a new laptop either when you can just buy the worlds cheapest refurbished ones with that spec
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Dec 28, 2023 15:45
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God drat. I don't think I've manually hosed with swap file sizes since XP.
slidebite fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 19:49
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Remember when Microsoft released a Surface branded Windows 11 machine in 2021 with 4GB of RAM? I sure do. https://www.theverge.com/22713963/microsoft-surface-go-3-review
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Dec 28, 2023 20:28
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I have an... High performance SSD or nvme. Going from 1gb swap to 20gb really woke up my 16gb personal windows laptop where I'll commonly have 25-50 tabs open + fusion 360
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Dec 28, 2023 21:02
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Twerk from Home posted:Remember when Microsoft released a Surface branded Windows 11 machine in 2021 with 4GB of RAM? I sure do. https://www.theverge.com/22713963/microsoft-surface-go-3-review this garbage is basically why i have an ipad mini
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Dec 28, 2023 22:06
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I'm pretty staunchly anti apple for personal devices (my work laptop is an Apple tho) but now that the iPad has USB-C it's a great device. It even has mouse and keyboard support, Bluetooth and USB. We got an iPad Air at the beginning of the pandemic with the USB-C and it's just always been a joy to use. And it doesn't have a weird proprietary charging connector so I can just charge it with the same cable I use for my phone, laptop, headphones, Nintendo
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Dec 28, 2023 22:25
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yeah that change is pretty much immediately when i got an ipad mini i dont think i have a single complaint over it, its exactly what i hoped it would be
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Dec 28, 2023 22:32
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Yeah the iPad is the very definition of "computing appliance" It's end user complexity is on par with that of a toaster. For what it is, I love it
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Dec 28, 2023 22:46
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change my name posted:My GF has been waffling on getting a new laptop for a while (literally an entire year) and it 1) had to be able to play BG3, 2) had to be 15" (preferably without a numpad), 3) had to be thin and light, and 4) had to cost less than $650. We finally pulled the trigger on a refurbished 2020 AMD Omen 15 with a 1660ti for $570 as that seemed to satisfy every requirement apart from weight. Unfortunately it looks like HP stopped pushing out model-specific graphics drivers for it, and using Nvidia's stock drivers disables automatic switching between the iGPU and dedicated graphics to maximize battery life. Update on this, I went in and with everything set up, games run perfectly fine. BG3 seems pegged at 50-60 FPS with everything on high and FSR 2.2 set to ultra quality. I'm pretty surprised at the fit and finish of everything, especially for the price (she ended up with a 144Hz model with the larger 70whr battery with 100% battery health, and I measured the laptop weight at 4.5 pounds. I noticed this in the reviews I've read for this model too so I'm not sure why some are lighter than the 5.5-pound HP spec). The keyboard also feels pretty nice to type on too. If anyone's interested, there are still a few units left on Amazon Warehouse: https://www.amazon.com/HP-15-EN0023DX-GeForce-Backlit-Keyboard/dp/B08QCR5JHC/
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Dec 28, 2023 22:49
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Might be a dumb question. Does the 16GB version of Razer laptops come with 2 x 8GB sticks or 1 x 16GB stick? Just wondering how much extra RAM I'd need to buy.
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Dec 29, 2023 00:31
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It might depend on the model.
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Dec 29, 2023 15:48
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AlternateNu posted:Might be a dumb question. Does the 16GB version of Razer laptops come with 2 x 8GB sticks or 1 x 16GB stick? Just wondering how much extra RAM I'd need to buy. Lockback posted:It might depend on the model. In my experience, it seems even more random than that, and could depend on the specific production run of a given model. When I've tried to find out similar information when buying laptops that has been true and more often than not my luck has been that the unit I receive has two smaller sticks instead of one bigger stick. Razer might be more consistent in this regard, but across Dell, HP, and ASUS laptops over the last few years the above has been my experience - until you have the machine in-hand you won't know whether it has one or two sticks. Edit: And Acer. CaptainSarcastic fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Dec 29, 2023 |
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Dec 29, 2023 19:37
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I've had 4 moderately expensive gaming machines in the last 16 or 17 years. 2 Asus, a Lenovo, and an MSI. They all had two occupied dimm slots. I don't know much about razers though. I don't think they'd be foolish enough to sell one of their premium gaming laptops with a single channel ram setup, but I guess you never know for sure. Best bet would be to search the particular "model number + teardown". Odds are someone somewhere has prized off the bottom panel.
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Dec 29, 2023 19:57
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You can even find the maintenance manuals themselves too. But you need model numbers and I don't really want to go check a ton of razor models to see if they're all the same or not. I'd expect they'd usually have both used, though I typically don't suggest razor because they tend to be overpriced and gets out over their skis in terms of thermals. They're good laptops though.
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Dec 29, 2023 21:32
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change my name posted:Update on this, I went in and with everything set up, games run perfectly fine. BG3 seems pegged at 50-60 FPS with everything on high and FSR 2.2 set to ultra quality. I'm pretty surprised at the fit and finish of everything, especially for the price (she ended up with a 144Hz model with the larger 70whr battery with 100% battery health, and I measured the laptop weight at 4.5 pounds. I noticed this in the reviews I've read for this model too so I'm not sure why some are lighter than the 5.5-pound HP spec). The keyboard also feels pretty nice to type on too. If anyone's interested, there are still a few units left on Amazon Warehouse: https://www.amazon.com/HP-15-EN0023DX-GeForce-Backlit-Keyboard/dp/B08QCR5JHC/ Glad you've been liking that HP Omen 15. It got really good reviews that year. I got mine back in 2020 as an open box during the holiday season for a steal. Its held up pretty well except for a few busted keys. Its since been passed onto my brother and he uses it daily for Fortnite.
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Dec 30, 2023 04:58
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Hadlock posted:I'm pretty staunchly anti apple for personal devices (my work laptop is an Apple tho) but now that the iPad has USB-C it's a great device. It even has mouse and keyboard support, Bluetooth and USB. We got an iPad Air at the beginning of the pandemic with the USB-C and it's just always been a joy to use. And it doesn't have a weird proprietary charging connector so I can just charge it with the same cable I use for my phone, laptop, headphones, Nintendo I'm legit impressed that Apple did something in a "normal" way for once. (my cynical brain thinks there's gotta be random bullshit Apple limits somewhere, like it only puts out 200mv or some nonsense about why it doesn't quick charge on a non apple transformer.) It's been a LONG road to get to basic functionality of a data port! Grats!
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Dec 30, 2023 19:28
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down1nit posted:I'm legit impressed that Apple did something in a "normal" way for once. (my cynical brain thinks there's gotta be random bullshit Apple limits somewhere, like it only puts out 200mv or some nonsense about why it doesn't quick charge on a non apple transformer.) the EU forced them to legally so lol
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Dec 30, 2023 19:35
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Mental Hospitality posted:Best bet would be to search the particular "model number + teardown". Odds are someone somewhere has prized off the bottom panel. This is the right strategy. The word disassembly works too as a search term. Check Google and YouTube separately. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all soldered, that's seems like a solid Razer play. How can we make our laptops even less reliable?
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Dec 30, 2023 19:53
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Worf posted:the EU forced them to legally so lol lol of course
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Dec 30, 2023 19:54
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Yeah this was a euro thing. I forget exactly but it says something like "if you sell more than N devices you need to use a standard connector" and "because you use a standard connector you can't ship a charger or cable with it" Selling a billion devices a year across Europe (phones tablets watches laptops etc) each with their own incompatible charger and cable was insane I'm glad the EU finally put their foot down With the new 240w USB-pd standard most everything can finally be on a single standard. Took us long enough
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Dec 30, 2023 22:27
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Hadlock posted:Yeah this was a euro thing. I forget exactly but it says something like "if you sell more than N devices you need to use a standard connector" and "because you use a standard connector you can't ship a charger or cable with it" Yeah, agreed. I adore USB-C at this point, and just can't wait for the labeling to catch up so that I can tell easily what wattage a given cable can carry, or what speed of data transfer it can attain. At this point I've labeled or tagged some of my cables to be able to differentiate between them, which is a bit of a pain.
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Dec 30, 2023 22:35
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CaptainSarcastic posted:Yeah, agreed. I adore USB-C at this point, and just can't wait for the labeling to catch up so that I can tell easily what wattage a given cable can carry, or what speed of data transfer it can attain. At this point I've labeled or tagged some of my cables to be able to differentiate between them, which is a bit of a pain. based on HDMI cables i suspect we'll be onto USB-D before that ever happens
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Dec 30, 2023 22:40
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I've been using the Anker powerline series of cables since at least 2018 never had one fail. Currently in a hotel traveling, phone posting with one plugged into my phone. I think the USBC to USBC ones all start at 60w and go up to 100w I think I have like 5 or 6; three or four at my house and one or two in my travel bag My laptop (the only thing that actually needs 100w) charges via a 100w thunderbolt 3 cable that's more or less permanently attached to my thunderbolt 3 dock that can do 100w charging Edit: I have 4 USBC to USBC they're all 60w according to my Amazon order history I have 8 usbA to USB-C Anker powerline but they max out at like 15w I think Hadlock fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 23:13
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If you're on a Legion laptop do yourself a huge favor and uninstall Lenovo Vantage post-haste. Install Lenovo Legion Toolkit instead and look forward to a life with far less issues on the laptop. I had two sleep-related problems that went away with Vantage: - Explicit Sleep from the shutdown menu would sit on the login screen without sleeping. - Auto sleep from a timeout would put the laptop into unwakeable sleep - nothing would bring it back other than power cycling. Both issues have gone away with Vantage. Toolkit is just nicer all around too - handles the keyboard RGBs, notifications and a bunch more stuff than Vantage. You get to uninstall a bunch of Lenovo software that hasn't been updated in close to a year as another bonus.
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Dec 31, 2023 17:13
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v1ld posted:- Auto sleep from a timeout would put the laptop into unwakeable sleep - nothing would bring it back other than power cycling. I've experienced this on my Asus machine in the past and wasn't sure if it was just a Windows thing, or related to the Armoury Crate software. I ditched that software too and haven't noticed this behavior much, if at all, since.
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Dec 31, 2023 17:38
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Mental Hospitality posted:I've had 4 moderately expensive gaming machines in the last 16 or 17 years. 2 Asus, a Lenovo, and an MSI. They all had two occupied dimm slots. I don't know much about razers though. I don't think they'd be foolish enough to sell one of their premium gaming laptops with a single channel ram setup, but I guess you never know for sure. Best bet would be to search the particular "model number + teardown". Odds are someone somewhere has prized off the bottom panel. I appreciate all the responses to the DIMM slot question. Haven't been able to find an answer for this year's Razers, but I guess for thread cognizance, ROG Zephyrus 14s from this year (which is the other one I'm looking at) come with one 16GB soldered and one open slot while the 2022 and earlier models were all 8 + 8 soldered which  BestBuy seems to have a decent deal on a trimmed down Zephyrus 14 prime for easy SSD/RAM upgrades.
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Dec 31, 2023 19:30
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AlternateNu posted:I appreciate all the responses to the DIMM slot question. Haven't been able to find an answer for this year's Razers, but I guess for thread cognizance, ROG Zephyrus 14s from this year (which is the other one I'm looking at) come with one 16GB soldered and one open slot while the 2022 and earlier models were all 8 + 8 soldered which I picked up the NA402NU version (4050 GPU) for about $800 at Best Buy over the early BF sales and it had the 16GB soldered in with an open slot. I put in a 48GB DDR5 4800MHz (get whatever speed suits your system) stick to bring it to 64GB. Caveat: there are 8 visible screws, one is captive (bottom right side if you have it bottom facing up with the keyboard facing you) and there are three under rubber plugs along the center on the metal plate (that I didn't notice immediately which is why I have a new bottom tray on order. cracked the side of the tray) remove the rubber plugs to get to the screws. The RAM slot is to the right center with a flap over it. SSD is on the left. Battery is a little hard to disconnect before doing any work, but having blown up a 2021 G14 with a wifi antenna cable, I tend to disconnect the battery now. Next step for me is to see if a 4TB NVMe fits in there.
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Dec 31, 2023 22:47
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Is there a recommended laptop for general office work? Do care about :
Probably minimal storage and performance requirements though my habit is to go a little above what I think I need.
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Jan 3, 2024 04:27
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You want a dock if you want lots of ports
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Jan 3, 2024 05:20
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I think they want ports on the laptop lol But for real, what you are describing is a laptop in general. Goon recommendations for general purpose trend towards business laptops. You're gonna hear a lot about thinkpads. Give us a budget and how much you care about new vs something used but bad rear end. For brain-off cheap portables, consider used hp probooks or elitebooks. Thinner laptops will have less ports necessarily.
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Jan 3, 2024 09:28
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Comedy macbook air 2017 option. They run win 10 pretty well, and macos sorta well for under $200. Great keyboard too.
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Jan 3, 2024 09:31
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