New T430U Owner, couple ram / express cache questions

[ledoktre]

Greetings to lead_org and to all,

I just picked up a T430U laptop over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I'm in the process of selecting some RAM. I read on another forun that lead_org had no trouble bringing his T430U up to 16GB ram, and thats my goal.

Here's the interesting bit. I could have swore that I read the laptop shipped with 1333 ram. I purchased 2 8GB 1333 sticks. Have not opened them. When I finally found time and opened this bad boy up (and very easy to work on, by the way!!), I found out the ram inside was actually 1600.

Question 1 being -- is there enough difference to warrant shipping the new ram back and buying 1600?

Question 2 being -- I have bios version H6ET61WW (2.02). Will I need to upgrade this to see the ram?

Question 3 being -- how does one verify that my express cache is working? I made the mistake of using a partition tool to resize C down to create a D (DATA) drive. It borked my load. Long story short, it would not restore from USB until I cleared the GPT partition. I am not 100% sure if I need to update any settings to make sure express cache is working, or where to do that. Advice, please..

Thanks all ..

ledoktre

EDIT : To confirm for everyone, my T430U has the ram sticks removable -- nothing soldered on the board. I have two 204 pin slots. Laptop shipped with 4GB ram, and I just removed a 4GB stick.

[jayton4]

Question 1: There is not a noticeable difference. RAM by its very nature is very fast. The 1600MHz will certainly benchmark higher. You will have a fast computer either way, so to say if it is enough to warrant returning to get the 1600MHz is going to have to be your personal decision. If it were me, I would get the 1600MHz since they are about the same price. I picked up 4 sticks of 8GB Kingston 1600MHz for $25 each a couple weeks ago for my HP 4530s and my wife's Vostro 3560.

Question 2: That should not matter unless it is mentioned specifically in the readme.txt to go along with the BIOS update.

I don't know about Question 3.

[ledoktre]

Good evening,

Thanks for the reply, jayton4. I am on the phone right now with NewEgg getting a return setup.

On question 2, where I'd mentioned the bios update. The version I listed is what is on the laptop right now. I'd read in another post somewhere where lead_org mentioned that there was a bios update that was not posted anywhere that was needed to use third-party ram. I guess I was trying to figure out if I needed this bios update he was referring to or if I maybe already had it?

On question 3, anyone else who feels like chiming in, feel free

Thanks,m

[ledoktre]

Good evening,

Just an update for anyone following this post. I returned my 1333 ram and bought 2 8gb sticks of 1600. Ended up buying gskill this time around. Installed it, picked up 16GB without issue.

So question 1, which was whether to return the ram and buy 1600 ram is a moot point now. All done.

Question 2 asking about the bios update also seems to be a moot point, as it picked 16 up no problem.

Question 3 relating to the Express Cache still stands however but with a twist. I am breaking the twist into a and b parts, as below :

Question 3a
So I have two of these laptops. One has the stock 500gb spinning drive + mSata. The original question 3 about how to verify the express cache is working is still out there. I'd like to verify its working after I cleared the GPT partition table and restored fresh from USB media.

Question 3b
On the second laptop, I picked up a Samsung 256GB Sata3 SSD drive. Out comes the spinning drive, and while I was in there, I pulled the mSata card as well, figuring it didn't make sense to cache a Sata3 SSD drive to a Sata2 SSD. I feel like the speed overall is really kind of slow. Just loading Linux Mint from USB took 2-3 hours. Booting in after it was installed took 10 minutes or so? I put this question with 3a above as I am questioning if there is somewhere that I need to disabled the express cache to see full speed.

Thanks,

[lead_org]

i see my name is mentioned couple of times.

Q 3a) Since you are using your T430u with Win 8 (i loaded Win 7 as soon as i got mine machine), you can verify whether your mSATA is working by doing this:

1. Press Windows key + R
2. Right click on 'Computer' that is listed in the tab, File + Computer + View
3. Select 'Manage'
4. Select 'Disk Management'

If your mSATA is working as a cache device, then it will have two partitions listed in Disk 1.

Question 3b) are you using Windows 8 still or a different OS now?

[ledoktre]

Greetings lead_org and all ;

Sorry to you if I was talking about you behind your back (grins). I was quoting another post, maybe even from another forum (not sure) where you had talked about a bios update being needed for this laptop to see more than 8gb or aftermarket ram. At the time, I was trying to figure out if I needed to flash it prior to it arriving. Thats all good now - 16 is running very fine.

Question 3a
Thanks for the info on that. I'll check it out and see if its being 'cached'. I'm very new to this express cache thing and it just felt like the system was a little slower after I reloaded it. I questioned if I messed up the cache when restoring, and this should tell me if its running proper. So thank you!

Question 3b
The OS is yet undecided. I am seriously considering just running Linux Mint on the laptop, perhaps with a dualboot Windows 8 or Windows 8 in a VM (we'll see). Most everything I do is on Linux. Not to refer to another one of your posts, but I was thinking that I saw a note that there was something that needed to be done to disable the express cache so you could drop in an SSD instead of a spinning drive. I guess I'm just wondering, if I drop in a new SSD drive, pull out the mSata, and aside from knowing that I need to load the OS, is there any other steps needed besides physically switching things around?

Thanks,

[lead_org]

if you are installing the 2.5 inch SSD, there nothing that really need to be changed in BIOS.

[ledoktre]

I am installing a Samsung 256GB 2.5" SSD (SATA3). So I should be fine then.

Thanks!

[lead_org]

well i am not sure what could go wrong with installing a new hdd in the T430u, i have done it like 5 times already doing various benchmark test.

[ledoktre]

It installed just fine. I installed with a thumbdrive before, this time maybe I'll try a usb dvd.

Thanks,

[ledoktre]

Time to wake this thread up.

I've been having some serious problems loading a variety of operating systems. The latest being Linux Mint 14 or Linux Mint Debian Edition. Seems to load ok, a little slow perhaps, but boot time after the load is like 10 minutes. Half the time it crashes a video driver.

So, I thinks to myself, what have I done to this laptop since it was new? SSD and RAM. Decided to run MemTest86 on the ram. The version I had (4.20) would not recognize the CPU properly, so I figured it didn't give me valid results. I downloaded the 5.0 b1, and it detected everything just fine. I was in the middle of the test when I was trying to feel my keyboard to see how the temp was doing, when it wigged out 100% and rebooted. Ok, this isn't good I was thinking.

I tried it a few more times and thought, this only happens when I touch the keyboard, no matter how lightly it seemed. I thought then, perhaps its something with the new ram. I pulled the new ram out and put the original stick back in. Ran the same test, and it did seem to run faster. At the time I attributed that to 1/4 the ram to test (4 vs 16). It still wigged on me when I touched the keyboard, so either I didn't figure out the problem, or it was just something in MemTest86 Beta.

I wasn't feeling too good when I decided, what the heck, lets try booting this laptop up. Wouldn't ya know it, it loaded up all nice and fast? 10 second boot. Confused.

So this question goes out to anyone who might be able to shed some light onto the ram on a T430U. It registers 16GB, but somethings off. Is there some settings to adjust or some bios update to do to allow this ram to work? Spec wise, it is GSkill (F3-1600C10D-16GSQ) DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, 1.5V, CL10-10-10 SO-DIMM ram. The original ram was Hynix, DDR3-12800, 1.5V SO-DIMM ram, not 100% sure on the CL details.

Please advise... I'd like to get this up and running

Thanks,