upgrade notebook memory

[yanon]

My notebook has a stick of Samsung (M470T6554CZ3) PC2-5300 DDR2 512MBytes memory. I want to add a stick of 1Gbytes PC2-5300 Trascend or PC2-5400 PQI or OCZ Value into the notebook. Do you think there is going to be a problem with a non symmetric upgrade (one side has 512 Mbytes and another side has 1Gbytes)? Which of the three brands do you recommend?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Shouldn't be at all.

 

[Lord Evermore]

It shouldn't work any worse than it does now at least. Presumably your notebook doesn't support dual-channel, since when they do, they already have two modules installed. If it did support dual channel, all that would happen is you wouldn't get dual-channel mode still.

You could probably go with whatever's cheap, since you don't have any chance of overclocking or controlling the memory speed. According to Samsung at 667MHz that module is 5-5-5 rated, though that doesn't guarantee that the chipset is running it at that. You can use CPU-Z to see what you currently have, and make sure you get a module that is programmed for the same latencies or better.