Increasing laptop's speed

Question

I have an i3 processor laptop[i3-6006U CPU @ 2.00GHz] with 4GB RAM which is pre installed. I have used it for 3 years and it has slowed own to a considerable extent. I was thinking about increasing the speed by installing an 8 GB RAM from Crucial but was advised against it because the i3 processor would not be able to handle the 12 GB RAM installed and there would be no change in the sluggish space of my laptop. Is this true? I have primarily used it to download movies from torrent and make college projects.

Answer 1

Typical i3 computers come with a 5,400 rpm hard drive. That combination is a slow as can be. (Experience).

An SSD will help it a lot but it will still be an i3.

Memory beyond 8 GB will not help substantially if you are not running Virtual Machines (too slow for that).

So best investment: Replace the drive with an SSD.

Note to followup: Unless your data needs are huge, a 512 GB fast SSD should do.

Answer 2

RAM and SSD will definitely improve experience but there is a huge caveat.
Usually computers "slow down" because:

1. They are loaded with unnecessary software starting with the system
2. The dust is blocking air vents, or the heatsink vents are completely clogged reducing its ability to dispense the heat. When CPU overheats, it will throttle down to protect itself from damage.
3. Another thermal issue is with the thermal paste. Usually the cheap paste will dry out and will lose its ability to transfer the heat efficiently.

In order to revive the computers I take following steps:
(depends on the outcome of troubleshooting, and the budget)

1. Clean the fans and radiator/heatsink (if clogged)
2. Clean up the startup, tasks scheduler, scan system etc,
3. Apply fresh thermal paste (if laptop is over 2 years old)
4. Upgrade RAM and switch HDD to SSD (if planing to do that, save time cleaning the OS)

As far as the RAM support, you need to look up how much will your motherboard support. Your CPU supports up to 32GiB

Edit

As per your comment, I am assuming there are no issue with CPU throttling.

When OS is running out of RAM it will start using virtual memory (also called paging file or swap). It means that OS will write content of the fast RAM into slow storage. Obviously upgrading the RAM will help with this issue. Especially considering that the Windows 10 requires minimum 2GB RAM We still don't know what exactly is a brand and model of your laptop but for 3-4y old computer I would doubt it won't support 12GB.

Meanwhile you can improve the performance slightly by disabling windows effects:
In run window (press Win+R) enter SystemPropertiesAdvanced
Under Performance click on Settings...
Under Visual Settings tab select Adjust for best performance
You can decide for yourself if that will improve anything.

I would also try to tune up the OS with following steps:

Startup
Let's disable unnecessary software from startup:
Open Task Manager - press Ctrl+Shift+Esc
At the bottom of new window click More details
Select Startup tab.
You can safely disable all the application by right clicking and selecting Disable.

You can also simply use troubleshooting tool to disable all startup items. Open Run window - press Win+R
Type msconfig and press Enter
Select Services tab
Before you do anything here, look at the bottom and select Hide all Microsoft services
Now all the essential services are hidden but you still have to be careful what you are disabling. I would recommend to leave all services by Intel AMD or NVIDIA. The safest approach is to disable services you are recognizing to be unnecessary. When done, restart the computer

Another place that automatically starts applications is Task Scheduler. Open Run window again and type taskschd.msc and press Enter
In the window on the left select Task Scheduler Library. In the main window you can select all scheduled Tasks and Disable them or Delete them.
It is safe to do so, but you may disable some automatic update checking for some software. Your call.

Malware
Next step would be to run malware scan. There are many good scanners, but I like to use Hitman Pro currently owned by Sophos.
You can use its 30-day trial.Hitman Pro

You will need to fill the legal mambo jumbo and agree to EULA...

Check disk
After restarting clean system you can check if your system file is OK.
Open Command Prompt:
Press Win key and in menu type cmd don't press Enter.
Right click and select Run as Administrator, then if prompted by UAC press yes.
In command prompt execute command:chkdsk /f c:
If it will ask to schedule it for next system restart press y and Enter.
Now just restart the computer. System will run the scan, correct errors and it will restart again.
To see the outcome of the scan you can open Event viewer:
Win+R - > type eventvwr.msc and press enter.
In the window on the left, expand Windows Logs and select Applications
On the right hand side, under actions find Filter Current Log... Open it and in the window expand the Even sources: and scroll down to Wininit select it and press OK.
You can see if there were any issues and if all were resolved.

Checking System Files
Now we can scan protected system files for corruptions.
In the Command Prompt (opened as Administrator) type these commands:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

DISM uses Windows Update to provide the files that are required to fix corruptions. When completed run sfc /scannow and press enter.
For more details about fixing corrupted system files go to:support.microsoft.com...

Answer 3

You need to provide the make and model for accurate advice, but that CPU can handle up to 32 gigs of memory (as per https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/91157/intel-core-i3-6006u-processor-3m-cache-2-00-ghz.html) so the claim it won't work with more memory is likely false. Crucial and Kingston websites both allow you to look up valid memory configurations for most equipment and are reliable sources.

Memory upgrades can make a massive difference and are a good idea.

There is also another thing to look at which is also a common bottleneck - if you have an hdd, its worth replacing it with an SSD.

Answer 4

Change your hard drive to ssd really helps out a lot whether you are gaming or just browsing, it would boost up your program opening speed. You could try to upgrade to 6g ram or 8g ram if possible, and last of all, it's always a good idea to upgrade your software, like using a smaller software and don't multitasking, and you could try to install some chrome extension like adblocker, I'm also college student, I know how important multitasking means to you, and other extension like great suspender, it will free up a lot of ram space, trust me, it will get faster.