Notebooks & Netbooks

[JayH]

Acer Aspire R7

The one they're calling Star Ship Enterpise because with hinge you can it look like the Star Ship Enterprise.

[HK53T]

RAM for R7 is DDR3 1333

[b9chris]

So just to verify:

Both the Acer Aspire R7-571 and R7-571G (the only 2 R7 models) have 6gb of RAM composed of:

4gb of RAM that isn't replaceable - it's soldered onto the motherboard

2gb of RAM that's a normal SO-DIMM in a RAM slot that can be swapped out

So to upgrade to 12gb, you remove the 2gb and swap in an 8gb SO-DIMM of DDR3 1333Mhz PC10600.

Is that correct?

[b9chris]

The Best Buy that sold me the R7 recommended DDR3 1600 PC3-12800. They promised they'd upgraded these before. Crucial's site also points you to DDR3 1600 PC3-12800.

On the other hand, both Best Buy (Geek Squad) technicians I spoke to seemed clueless about the onboard RAM and how the upgrade works/should work.

[Foxy-lucy]

Hi

can someone please clear this up what is the best 8gb ram stick to buy for the aspire r7.

the last two posts mention two different ones. im a girl that is more in to shoes then ram sticks so would be really sweet if someone can tell me what is the 8gb stick that i need to buy,

[b9chris]

I upgraded mine with the ram I mentioned above, and it's working perfectly. Any single stick of 8gb DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 will work.

[Foxy-lucy]

ok thanks for that noted.

im not someone that knows much about the insides of a pc but watched a few videos and it seems easy enough to replace a ram stick.

i have never done this before, would you say its easy enough to do with some directions, you have done it before so should you should be a good judge on how easy or hard it is to do?

also i wanted to get a 256GB Lite-On M3M mSATA SSD SATAII which i understand is a really fast hard drive, its more then enough space for me as i got everything on cloud, do you think i would be able to remove the existing HD to stick this in or best give to someone that know what they are doing, im guessing that this one is too much for me as also i would need to do the OS win 8 again on new HD and i wouldnt have a clue how to do that.

need to leave the boys to their toys, this place is not for a lady :-)

[b9chris]

Best Buy can swap in both for $100 after you buy them separately online. If you've never done it before, setup an appointment, bring it in, be nice and ask to watch them do the work. If you're nice enough they'll break policy and do the work there in front of you.

If you do it yourself, the laptop is deceiving. There are 10 obvious screws, and 3 more hidden screws under the 2 central pads on the bottom of the laptop. They require a Torx T7 screwdriver bit - a T8 or T6 or plain hex won't do as they're very shallow.

The ram is a standard SO-DIMM slot you can easily google video instructions for swapping. The hard drive is a standard SATA that just has the standard 2 simple plugs.

Then you need to go into the Bios (F2 at boot) and change the ram amount.

Transferring Windows 8 is no party. Before swapping drives, make an OS recovery drive - you'll need a usb drive with at least 16gb of storage. I used a sata to usb adapter and an old sata drive. Then install easeus todo backup, a free drive cloning utility. Clone the drive over to the ssd (for example by using a usb to sata adapter). Then swap the drives.

The machine booted for me and worked perfectly after these steps, except it sometimes fails to wake from sleep properly. The machine sometimes locks up on wake and restarts. A clean install of Win8 would surely fix that, or some repair process. The automatic troubleshooter in the recovery drive doesn't fix it, though. I'm just living without effective sleep for now.

[Foxy-lucy]

like you said the ram part i just about understood, i have to buy some fancy screw driveres to do it but got it.

the second part about he Msata im not even going to consider as its bound to end in tears and shoes flying around the room hitting people when it doesnt work so will have to avoid that.

problem is im out working in dubai and my R7 is getting shipped to me, i doubt i could find someone out here to do that for me, would not leave my machine with anyone and come back for it thats for sure.

maybe acer have a service center here, if i buy the parts maybe they would do the work.

i really want a faster HD and more ram and keep this for a few years. i dont do any gaming or cad work its just for normal day to day use but i dont want long boot times and load times.

if i bought a new windows 8 on CD would i still have to do all those stuff you said when changing over to Msata, the 24 gb ssd that comes standard with the machine dones that have to be removed when putting in the new drive or is that stuck on the motherboard.??

[b9chris]

If you're cool with losing your data, you can just swap the drives, then boot from the recovery drive. Use the Refresh action to overwrite the OS with a fresh copy. Solved. I'm pretty sure this keeps some of your files, removes most programs you installed, and leaves some working, but it's generally simpler.