RAM & SSD upgrades for Asus Vivobook 14

Cool Buddy

Wise Old Owl
I have an Asus Vivobook 14 laptop (full config in signature). It came with a 4 GB soldered RAM and 4 GB RAM in the only RAM slot. It also came with 250 GB NVMe SSD.
The laptop is mostly used for coding and internet browsing. I rarely watch any movies on it, but I do watch YouTube videos, mostly tutorials and stuff.

I want to do the following upgrades to it:

RAM: Want to upgrade the 4 GB module to 8 GB. Why? Three reasons (skip if you're in a hurry):
  1. While for usual day to day use, 8 GB is enough, I sometimes want to try out Linux distros on VM. At those times, the RAM is not sufficient.
  2. Since there's no dedicated graphics, I have some RAM shared with the Vega 8 GPU, which means I don't have the entire 8 GB available.
  3. I need a 4 GB RAM for my Synology NAS. So instead of buying 4 GB for it, I am taking the opportunity to upgrade my laptop and reuse this 4 GB module in my NAS

SSD: Wish to add 500 GB SATA SSD. Why? Again, three reasons (skip if you're not interested):
  1. 256 GB is not enough from a long term perspective. It is generally ok because I have 1 TB cloud storage and I store less frequently used stuff directly on the cloud. But whenever I'm travelling, if I want to put a few movies on it, the disk space starts to run a bit low
  2. I want to dual boot it with Linux. I can't do that if I have my documents on the same drive. I will not have enough space and I might accidentally delete some files, don't want to take the chance
  3. Also, having my documents on a separate drive ensures that if anything goes wrong during installation/resetting the laptop, since it will only affect my boot drive, my documents will remain intact.

So I have two questions:
  1. Which RAM to buy? The internal soldered RAM is DDR4 2400 Mhz. I guess for stability, it's best to buy a RAM with the same speed.
  2. Which 2.5" SATA SSD (500 GB) to buy? Unfortunately the laptop came with only one M.2 slot, which is taken up by the boot drive. So I only have the option of 2.5" drives. I shortlisted Crucial MX500 and WD Blue. Crucial seems to be the better option based on reviews.
I'll be upgrading in 3-4 weeks.
 

RumbaMon19

Feel Pain.
Even I have the same one, Asus vivobook 14 m509da


RAM: Want to upgrade the 4 GB module to 8 GB. Why? Three reasons (skip if you're in a hurry

If you did this, you will loose dual channel benefit as it has and CPU(ig URS is amd version.) I was also thinking to do that but couldn't due to this reason

Secondly, as I also want to do SSD upgrade can you tell me which slot is there?

Is it m.2 sata or nvme? Asus's site has confusing specs.
 
OP
Cool Buddy

Cool Buddy

Wise Old Owl
My laptop, Asus Vivobook 14 M409, has a 2.5" slot. It has only 1 M.2 slot which is already occupied. I'd have preferred two M.2 because as of now, 2.5" SATA and M.2 NVMe SSDs have pretty much the same pricing.

But this is specifically for M409. Some other laptops in the same Vivobook 14 range have two M.2 slots and no 2.5" slots. What is your laptop's model number?

Edit: Just saw you've put the model number on top. it's the same as mine, one M.2 and one 2.5"
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OP
Cool Buddy

Cool Buddy

Wise Old Owl
If you did this, you will loose dual channel benefit as it has and CPU(ig URS is amd version.) I was also thinking to do that but couldn't due to this reason
I know. But I don't think that makes so much of difference as to not upgrade to 12 GB
 

RumbaMon19

Feel Pain.
My laptop, Asus Vivobook 14 M409, has a 2.5" slot. It has only 1 M.2 slot which is already occupied. I'd have preferred two M.2 because as of now, 2.5" SATA and M.2 NVMe SSDs have pretty much the same pricing.

But this is specifically for M409. Some other laptops in the same Vivobook 14 range have two M.2 slots and no 2.5" slots. What is your laptop's model number?

M509DA,

It does have a single m.2 slot and a 2.5" sata slot but I am unable to tell which type is the m.2
 
I know. But I don't think that makes so much of difference as to not upgrade to 12 GB
Your tasks aren't too RAM sensitive, like say gaming. You stand to gain more from higher RAM capacity, so go ahead. Get any 8GB DDR4 2400MHz stick from a reputed brand, like Adata, Crucial, Kingston, etc.

MX500 is a good SATA SSD, similar performance to WD Blue & even Samsung 860, but cheaper usually.
 
OP
Cool Buddy

Cool Buddy

Wise Old Owl
Update, I got a WD Blue 500 GB. I was looking to get Crucial, but it was out of stock on onlyssd.com when I wanted to buy and price on Amazon was very high.
Got a Crucial 2666 Mhz RAM. I figured the RAM currently installed was already 2666 Mhz, even though the soldered RAM is 2400 Mhz, which means even previously I was not running dual channel. So I got 2666 Mhz itself since it was cheaper than 2400 Mhz.

Opening the laptop was a bit of a hassle, especially due to the lack of specialised tools (which I have since bought). Putting the RAM in was straightforward. The SSD was not so easy, I had never seen that kind of connector before. But a couple of YouTube videos later, I managed to put it in with no issues.

The laptop is working fine and there's slight improvement in performance when two users are logged in simultaneously (which was when it would lag earlier).

@RumbaMon19 you upgraded?
 
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