I have a e14 Thinkpad gen 5 Intel 1335u with 8gb soldered ram and a 8gb 3200 ddr4 stick. 16 is not enough ram for my use as a developer so I put a 16gb stick in knowing only first 16 will run dual channel. Now my computer crashes randomly with high memory usage… read online that a 32gb is more stable single channel but I’m skeptical. Stability is pretty important to me as this is how I earn a living what do you all think? Also I would just buy a 32 and try it but everything got pricey the last 2 month
s
Would increasing swap or virtual memory size be fast enough?
En garde!
Reseat the stick you installed and run memtest 86.
It’s more likely that you have a badly installed stick or a faulty stick than consumer memory controllers in the last 20 years care about the installed memory being the same.
There’s no reason why a 32 gig stick of ram should be less stable than an 8. Your ram is defective. Ask for a replacement.
yea it’s a 16gb but yea I agree. although it was in my server for 3 years(laptop that cooked itself)! Going to run memtest here in a minute and will post my findings on all sticks I have around once I’m done with work
Wait… It’s a used stick? For future reference, that’s a key piece of information. I’m guessing it had a life before it was a server, making it older than 3 years. Depending on the history of the old laptop, I’d guess there’s a solid chance that stick is just worn out.
haha used is an understatement. was in a gaming laptop running frigate at like 90 degrees for 3 years. the other stick is a crucial 2666 16gb I have from same laptop. I’m too lazy to run memtest when I know there’s an issue. going to try slower speed and do the testing
i’ve had a lot more luck offloading cpu/ram/disk intensive work to beefy servers with cheaper and easier to obtain hardware and end up using my laptops as little more than thin clients and strongly recommend it if it’s an option for you to avoid these types of things.
Same, it’s great. Battery life is extended, the fan isn’t screaming, and I have great process continuity between devices since I’m usually connecting to a central point.
I’m running 8 and 32 in my T490, seems to work fine. I’m building software and leaking memory like crazy and it’s never been weird. I don’t see why 8 + 32 would be any different than 8 + 16 other than capacity.
Doesn’t the channel balance not matter that much? Like operations can be done in parallel. I always thought the benefits came from reading different things from each ram chip not synchronizing them byte for byte.
Also, what do you mean by crashes? Kernel panic? Random app death because the oom killer was activated should be expected when pushing the memory limits on Linux.
I have an asus laptop with same config but instead of 8Gb soldered I have 4 Gb soldered and I have a 16Gb ram stick.
Also can you set required freq, also I didn’t have that option so both of ram works at 2400Mhz instead of 3200Mhz.
good to know
So what did you do then?
nothing haha just left the bad 16gb stick in there because it mostly works. It’s hard to diagnose it as I use it for work 24/7… mayb I need another Thinkpad for when I diagnose the other
Very weird, ram sticks should work to the lowest freq if the soldered one is lower freq.
you already said in another comment something like “im too lazy to run memtest” i dont get it, why not just run the test and that will likely diagnose?
gotcha it is a team group one(I was skeptical too) I have another 16gb that is crucial I think but it’s 2666 speed. Will try memtest tonight and report back.
No reason to be skeptical, teams and groups are very trustworthy so teamgroup is a lock.
I have an E16 gen 1 AMD that I run in a similar configuration- 8 GB soldered + 16 GB SODIMM. I’ve had no problems.
I’d recommend what others have suggested - try reseating the RAM and run a memory test. Also, what distro are you using, not that it’ll necessarily help.
ubuntu fresh 24.04 install. also it’s still usable as is but crashes before I hit 24gb usage
I don’t like Ubuntu, but objectively, this is probably a hardware issue and not a software issue.
I mean, you can try another distro to be sure, but the chances of it solving the issue are slim.
If the RAM timings are not exactly the same, you’re going to have instability issues. This is why it’s always recommended to install pairs of the same exact model and brand, the clock timings.
I doubt that BIOS is going to give you the specs you need, but somewhere you’ll likely be able to find the timings and compatible memory for this machine. You’ll generally need something faster than what’s installed so it can step it’s timings down to be more in sync.
Any reasonably modern memory controller will clock the memory at the slowest one in dual channel. This hasn’t been an issue for decades.
You know, I had the same thought/opinion on Sunday before I spent 4 hours trying random combinations of leftover ram before I found a combo that would boot on my am4 board. Up to 48GB ram on my server now
The memory controller is part of the CPU, you probably need a new one.
Maybe, but it seems to be fine with matched speed ram. I think my issue at least is due to it being 1st Gen Ryzen. Originally on 32GB 2133mt/s, upgraded to 48GB 3200. Some light reading in-between switching ram sticks suggested not mixing G1 (2133,2400,2666,2933) & G2 (3000, 3200, 3600+) ddr4. And that is what my, testing found. Again, could just be 1st Gen issues tho.
1st Gen. Ryzen had the worst memory controller known to man. What made it worse is that memory speed dramatically affected performance on those CPUs. Anything over 2133 was a blessing.
That makes sense. They (AMD) had the right idea I guess, just didn’t quite nail it in the first try.
100% untrue. While a North Bridge controller can detect and attempt to set the clock frequency, there is absolutely no way to tell if both pieces of a mismatched pair will actually support the timings suggested or set by the controller, which will almost certainly default to whatever the on-board memory supports.
That along with the unknowns of whether it attempts to set channel ranks, which is almost certainly NOT an option to manually configure in a Thinkpad.
Not sure where you heard otherwise, but you’ve been misinformed.
This machine is also working with memory soldered on the board which comes with a whole host of other unknowns, which is why you look up what the timings are first and attempt to match that.
I member the north bridge
