RAM Upgrade or Storage upgrade? On a Budget.

[deanbog98]

Hey guys, I'm looking for some help with upgrading my computer, and I'm pretty new to the tech industry. And I'm only trying to spend about $160 at most.

7 months ago I bought a Dell Inspirion 15 7000 7567 Gaming Laptop.

SPECS:
-7th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-7300HQ Quad Core
-Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
-8GB RAM, DDR4, 2400MHz; up to 32GB
-256GB Solid State Drive
-NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5
There one additional slot for another RAM stick, and a slot for a 2.5 inch internal hard drive.


I'm a cheap college student who wasn't really trying to spend over $1000. As expected, I only have about 52GB left on my SDD, and want to add more games. My computer hasn't really slowed down since the first use, and I would like to keep like that. I only use the laptop for school work, keeping 12 tabs open at once, and then games likes Rocket League, Battlefront II, GTA, etc. I'm usually not a multi-tasker, so I rarely have multiple things running with my games. I just want to have my computer running as fast(if not faster) for as long as I can.


For my needs, would it be better to add 8gb of RAM, like the Crucial 8GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM.. then a HDD like the Seagate Firecuda Gaming 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA 6GB/s 5400rpm 128 MB Cache.... ?


Or would adding another another SSD, like the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III be more useful for me? (Can't you tell im copying-pasting?)

Any help would be most appreciated guys. You probably could tell me anything and i'd believe it, but i'd love to learn.

 

[Lutfij]

If you want to upgrade the ram, you should invest in a kit as opposed to buy a single stick of ram and making it pair with the existing stick. In retrospect, it's bad practice to mix and match rams. Think of them like shoes, loose one out of a pair and you eventually end up buying a pair brand new.

If you want to go for a ram upgrade, get a 2x8GB DDR4-2400MHz kit.

The platter HDD would be a good idea if you don't loose out on your SSD. You could later migrate the game library to your platter drive and increase the amount of free space on your SSD. FYI, running your SSD to near it's full capacity degrades it's lifespan and performance. Provided your SSD is M.2, you have a spot for a 9mm tall 2.5" HDD to go in there

Last point, make sure your BIOS is up to date prior to dropping in that ram kit.