I figured it out! I managed to get under my keyboard finally, and indeed, I only have two DIMM slots. I will soon purchase 2x8GB RAM.
I'm upgrading my Sager NP6165 from 8GB to 16GB RAM (see justification at the bottom) and having trouble figuring out how many card slots I have. Here's an image from underneath the laptop:
and the CPU-Z scan results:
The "SPD tab in the CPU-Z scan gives specs in the drop-down menu for 4 separate slots -- 1 and 3 are active, but 2 and 4 have everything grayed out (I evidently have 2 4GB cards). I've seen from youtube that similar models often have 2 more RAM card slots underneath the keyboard, which haven't yet figured out how to take off. But CrucialScan told me I have 2 slots (quote: "Slots:2 (2 banks of 1)"). What do you guys think?
Also, if it turns out I have 4 slots, would you guys recommend 4x4GB or 2x8GB cards (any performance differences)? And if I were to do 4x4GB, could I just add the 2 extra 4GB cards without replacing the old ones/is there anything complicated I'd have to do to get the BiOS to recognize the additional cards? Thanks in advance.
Justification: Almost all of my 8GB of RAM is usually "In Use"/"Standby" (I run a lot of programs concurrently, leave things open; although I still try to minimize usage e.g. with The Great Suspender extension for Chrome). When I try to run Lightroom/Photoshop I can have some major speed issues, and sometimes even get "out of memory" messages. I already have an SSD drive, which I know is the best choice for improving OS performance and speed of read/write-intensive software.
151 Answer
It looks like there are only 2 DIMM slots.
It may help if you go into the documentation (manual or online web doc) for your computer / manufacturer and find the compatible RAM modules for your specific machine.
Do yourself a favor and go to Amazon and find DDR3 Laptop RAM (2x8GB), if your laptop POSTS after you install it, you should be good to go. They have a great return policy in case it does not work.
If your laptop does not POST, then the RAM is incompatible.
Best of luck.
