How to know if a Laptop has RAM upgradability?

I encounter a lot of good deals of Laptops during my shopping online but I often find they have a very low RAM capacity. Is there a way for me to know for sure if I can upgrade the RAM or not? Are 64-bit systems by default able to have more than 4 GB of RAM?

 

Upgrading the RAM depends entirely on the motherboard and what it will take. Each slot has a maximum that it can handle and unless the retailer has specified what the max RAM is (either overall or per slot) and what it actually has in what combination you are often stuck until you actually have your hands on your laptop to know what is in there, if you are purchasing a 'good deal'. These Good deals will be using whatever RAM combinations are available to the retailer at the time, in whatever option is the cheapest.
Sorry it is not like purchasing a machine you have configured yourself where you can specify what RAM and what combination you have. For instance I always make sure that I have a sensible RAM combination but if I can leave a slot or 2 free for easy upgrade, I will.

And yes, 64bit systems are by default able to take more than 4Gb RAM

 

I see, thanks for the reply.

One thing though, does that mean that as long as the laptop is 64 bit, it's always possible to upgrade to more ram? You mentioned that each slot has a maximum, does that only apply to 32 bit then?

 

No. There is a maximum limit even under 64 bit simply because of what the motherboard has been programmed to handle. So if the laptop can take a maximum RAM of say 16Gb, and only has 2 slots for RAM it tells you that you can only put 2 * 8Gb in it. You can't put a single 16Gb RAM in 1 slot and leave the other slot empty.
It all comes down to how the manufacture of the motherboard programmed it and how much 'work' they put into that programming and what RAM chips were actually available when the motherboard was made - you can't program it to take a 16Gb RAM chip if one did not exist when the motherboard was first commissioned.
Sometimes I have seen RAM seed increase with a BIOS update, but never a RAM capacity increase, but not that is not very often and tbh I have never seen that happen on a laptop.

 

That makes sense, thanks a lot. I guess I should be more careful when buying a laptop with low ram. I really thought almost all laptops nowadays could upgrade to a certain amount and didn't know it depended on how the motherboard was designed. A lot of the good deals I found online offered low RAM and very limited information about other specs, now I have even more reason to be suspicious :/

 

They are there to clear old stock, nothing more. They are not there for the advantage of customer sadly. The advertising tries to make it look like it is, but the only people who benefit are the sellers. That said, they will do a set minimum, of browsing the internet, email and basic word processing and should last a year to 18 months before you start seeing problems, so in that sense they do have a life but sadly you will often have to strip out all of the RAM and replace with new to upgrade, rather than just add a new chip. Its another way of making money, because consumers who don't know about these issues will go back to the same seller a year later or after struggling for a while and will get conned into buying the upgrade through the same seller. The seller will get the cash from the new RAM and often the old RAM itself as well!