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I am trying to purchase a new laptop and want to put in more RAM manually and the model I'm looking at (Here's the link) says the memory is nonexpandable.

I assumed this meant that there isn't some easily accessible slot, so Toshiba doesn't want you messing around with it. But with a little know-how and a small enough screwdriver, you can get at the slots and upgrade.

However, when I asked the gentleman at best buy, he said that the advertised 4GB RAM is the maximum the motherboard can handle. So I'm not sure if that's true or if that's just something he has to say. Reviews online say that people put in more memory just fine so I'm very confused and don't want to buy it if I can't put at least 8GB of RAM in.

How can I know how much "a motherboard can handle"?

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Most Notebooks are cheap because they are exactly what they say they are.

First, you do due diligence by going to the manufacturer's website and look up whether the on-board memory can be upgraded. Non-expandable means that it already comes with maximum memory and there's not anything you can do to increase that. Toshiba specifically says:

4GB DDR3L 1600MHz (Memory is not user upgradeable, factory installed only)

Next, you have to find out what special means these reviews online are using to double the memory and if it's even applicable to your device. You don't want to be desoldering chips since you likely don't have the technical expertise. Several of the people who've tried find that aftermarket memory suppliers don't have any memory specs and therefore don't provide anything specific for this system and those who've tried to plug in 8GB have found it flat doesn't work. One mentions possibly upgrading it to the maximum of 6GB, but where he came up with that is unknown and might only be wishful thinking.

Just buy a laptop that's capable of running with 8GB and you'll be fine. This one's a pass.

Toshiba IS upfront about this so there's no reason to complain about it.

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  • Thanks so much @Fiasco Labs! Yeah I'm not looking to do any soldering but for example, I have an Acer netbook and Acer said it's nonupgradable too but you can relatively easily unscrew the back and double it up to a whopping 2GB. So I'm curious if some companies say something like that because they don't want you taking it apart yourself? But thanks for letting me know that Toshiba says what they mean!
    – user46348
    Sep 23, 2014 at 13:12
  • Due to production, they can design up a single motherboard and then use a less expensive and slimmer chipset that doesn't have the memory management for the larger amount of memory. It's probably got a single memory card of 4GB and if you could find it, would accept two 2GB memory cards. Of course everyone would like it to do 8GB. It's like a batch of Dell 170B machines we had. The difference was that the next version up used the same board, soldered another pair of sockets on the board and changed the chipset slightly. You could see the empty spaces, an extra $200 populated them. Sep 23, 2014 at 14:42

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