I own a six-year-old ThinkPad T420 laptop which I use to keep a backup of data from other computers. Although the machine works flawlessly even today, it’s a bit (naturally) slower compared to my three-year-old ThinkPad T450s which is my daily driver.
About four years ago, I upgraded the default HDD to SSD as an effort to make it a bit faster. A few days ago, I decided to upgrade its default 4 GB RAM to 8 GB RAM (I know I should have done it while upgrading to SSD only).
Before buying another 4 GB RAM stick, I wanted to make sure that it has an empty RAM slot.
While it’s easy to open the ThinkPad laptop and check the number of slots as well as available free slots, you can check the same without dismantling your laptop. You can use software to figure out the number of RAM slots on your PC and check if there are empty slots.
There are third-party utilities available like CPU-Z to check the number of RAM slots and empty slots. These third-party utilities provide in-depth information about your PC’s hardware.
Windows 10 users will be pleased to know that you don’t need to a third-party program to check the number of RAM slots and empty slots on your computer. Windows 10 now displays the total number of RAM slots on your computer as well as available empty slots in the Task Manager.
Check if there is an empty RAM slot on your Windows 10 laptop
Here is how to check the number of RAM slots and empty slots on your Windows 10 computer.
Step 1: Open the Task Manager. There are numerous ways out there to open the Task Manager. The easiest way is to simultaneously press Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys.
Step 2: If you get the small version of the Task Manager, click on the More details button to open the full-version.
Step 3: Switch to the Performance tab. On the left-side, click on Memory.
Step 4: Now, on the right-side, you will see details about the RAM, including details about the total number of RAM slots on your computer and number of slots currently being used.
As you can see in the picture above, my ThinkPad T450s has a total of two RAM slots, and both are currently occupied. This means that the laptop currently doesn’t have space for an additional RAM stick. If I need to increase the RAM, I will have to replace my existing RAM sticks with higher ones (replace 4 GB sticks with 8 GB to make the total to 16 GB).
How to check if your Windows 10 PC has SSD guide might also interest you.
Leave a Reply