Acer Aspire ES1 533-P14T _Windows 10 Shows More Memory Than What Was Installed

Gadget_Lover

Hello.  On Feb. 9, 2017, I bought a brand new Acer Aspire ES1 533-P14T, 15" laptop that Acer advertised as having 6GB of RAM (which I naturally assumed was installed memory).  Wouldn't you?  I had never seen a laptop having 6GB of physical RAM so yesterday, I carefully took off the back cover and to my amazement, the sticker on the ADATA AO1L16BC4R1-BQSS RAM circuit board read "DDR3 4GB 1600MHz Adata 1.35V". I noticed that there was ONLY one slot (bank) available for holding a RAM circuit board and not two slots (banks).  In the future, if I were to upgrade the memory from 4GB to 8GB (which is the maximum) for this laptop, I would buy one 8GB RAM circuit board and sell the original 4GB RAM circuit board.  I surfed to ADATA's Taiwan based website and this company only manufactures 2GB, 4GB and 8GB RAM circuit boards, and NOT a 6GB RAM size.

 

Well, Windows 10's system information said "Installed RAM - 6GB (5.83 useable)".  How can that be?  How can Windows 10 show more memory than what was installed?!  So, I ran the program CPU-Z and its Memory tab showed the Memory Size as being 5970 Mbytes (i.e. 5.97GB).  However, the SPD tab showed Module Size as being 4096 Mbytes (4.096GB).

 

I phoned Acer's Technical Support and this rep told me that I should disregard the ADATA sticker showing 4GB RAM memory size and just accept Windows 10's system information which showed 6GB of RAM as being the correct memory!!!  Is Acer legally correct in their depiction of this laptop having 6GB of RAM because Windows 10 said so?  Is that 2GB of memory in excess of the 4GB installed considered virtual memory? 

 

I said to that Acer dude that I am returning this 4GB RAM laptop that was touted as having 6GB of memory for a full refund.  He didn't seem to care.

Gadget_Lover

Jordan, you're a lifesaver!  You explained it so clearly.  I wonder why that Acer Tech dude and the salespeople at Radio Shack didn't use the terms "on board memory", "2GB of RAM was soldered to the motherboard", "only one bank/slot", etc., with me?

 

One final question: If I was to take out the 4GB RAM chip and substitute it with a brand new 8GB RAM chip which then gives me a total = 2 + 8 = 10GB of RAM, will my Acer laptop be able to handle 10GB total even though the specifications say 8GB maximum?  I like to know ahead of time before I purchase an 8GB RAM chip from crucial.com.  Thanks!