I am going to add an additional RAM stick to my laptop in the empty RAM slot on the motherboard, same exact RAM stick model.
Where can I get the protective layer I have on the first stick? Or do I just wrap it in electrical tape if even necessary?
It shouldn’t be necessary. Just put another stick in, and go.
Asked as the manufacturer has wrapped the original stick in what seems to be just a neatly cut piece of electric tape. Maybe it’s not necessary at all, as this stick doesn’t seem to touch anything else inside the system.
Shouldn’t be necessary, but you can just kapton tape.
It’s just a precaution taken by the manufacturer, you don’t need it.
Its called kapton tape. Its specialized, non-conductive, high temperature threshold tape that’s used to prevent shorts in electronics. You usually see it in laptops to hold things like wires in place if the manufacturer didn’t design guides into the case.
You should be able to buy it from Amazon or any e-tailer. Your local hardware store probabaly also sells it.
I don’t know why you would need it on a ram module though, unless the module itself has the possibility of coming into contact with a conductive surface or an SMD or other component on the board or surrounding enclosure.
Also, you’d be better off replacing both ram modules with a matching set from a kit. Even if you find the exact same module online, since they aren’t from the same batch, you can’t guarantee they’ll perform well together.
Uhm… understood.
About the RAM themself, getting two would be a waste. The current stick works perfectly, so I thought getting the same model online (that I found easily) would not make a fully working stick of RAM just unused.
You won’t realistically notice a difference using mismatched RAM. If you ran benchmarks you might, but in day to day usage, you won’t see it
I am not really talking about mismatched. I am talking about getting the exact model VS getting two fresh sticks and retire the original one. It doesn’t sound like both situation would create problems, again, sounds. In any case, in both cases it would be 2400MHz sticks because it appears to be the only supported frequency.
Buying one stick to match the one you already have is technically mismatching. Unless you get extremely lucky and end up with another stick from the same batch as the first, there will probably be some slight differences.
A lot of what you see online says that this is bad, and you should buy both sticks as a set, but realistically, you won’t see a difference.
I’ve been doing it for decades, and never seen an issue, and that’s in gaming and photo and video work :)
