Toshiba Satellite C55D-B upgrades

Alright so here's my situation, I just bought a Toshiba Satellite C55D-B102. Not the best laptop but it was a great deal. I want to know if I can upgrade the RAM and possibly the CPU, I've done a lot of research and I have found out that the mother board is the TOSHIBA ZBWAE. Toshiba says that the ram is not upgradable but it came with a 4gb stick and two slots which i find really dumb if you cant upgrade it. But i have no idea where to begin with the CPU it has an AMD A8-6410 with Radeon R5 APU running at 2.00 GHz.

 

It is not normally possible (IME) to upgrade the CPU on a laptop. They are quite frequently soldered onto the motherboard. It is not the same situation as a desktop.
As for the RAM, if Toshiba say that may is 4Gb per slot and you are already at 8Gb then that is probably the max, but a simple way of finding out is to visit this site and let it scan your machine. It reads the BIOS and analyses your machine, gets the hardware you have and checks it with what it can have and will tell you what your machine can and can't have. http://www.crucial.com

Down the left hand side when the scan has finished, you will see what you have currently. In my case I is 2 * 4Gb and it clearly states my max is 16Gb, so I can upgrade if I wish to 16Gb max. It also tells me my hard drive model and read speed, how much space I have left and what my chipset is.



On the right hand side and the costs of upgrades from them. It is useful to note the speed of the memory that is being sold to you. This is usually the max speed that your machine will take. You can buy cheaper, slower speed memory for your machine, but it will slow the machine down...

 

So it says my max is 16gb as well but not my chip set http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/scanview/4A28F53E31D926C3

 

I was surprised to see my chipset come up to be honest, and I would never expect to be able to upgrade it on a laptop. I think it is more for information.

The good news for your memory upgrade is that one of your slots on the laptop is empty so you don't need to dispose of the memory modules.

You can easily upgrade to 12Gb by adding an 8Gb stick to the empty slot which will speed up your machine no end. There is no point in buying RAM that is faster than your 4Gb RAM because laptop will slow everything down to the slowest RAM module... so unless you think you may dispose of the 4Gb in future, stick with something the same speed as the 4Gb RAM (unless it is really slow compared to what the 8Gb RAM module is that you are seeing on crucial. That will be the fastest that laptop can take.
Also bear in mind you don't need to by it from Crucial but if it has a problem crucial have a guarantee about if you purchased it after a scan - have a read of the site first and see what I mean.