We have noted that even still today there are lots of powerful productivity/gaming laptops which ship with only 16GB of RAM, which is quite insufficient if you do have multiple tools loaded in the background, even without running any games. On our test system, the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX8, with a WQXGA IPS 240Hz screen, an Intel Core i5-13500HX CPU, 512GB SSD and GeForce RTX 4060 8GB dedicated video card, we have noted many times that the memory usage was around 85% while on desktop, which is quite a lot if we need to also run some games or operate some virtual machines, perform video encoding and so on.

Fortunately, there are memory upgrade kits available from many manufacturers and the upgrade process is quite easy to do since it does not requite fiddling inside the UEFI interface as we need to with desktops, the laptop performing memory training automatically and settling on the best values right after the first boot.

Silicon Power has sent us a nice Dual Channel 2x16GB DDR5-4800 kit for review, with a CL of 40; the company does also have available DDR5-5200 and DDR5-5600, but if installed on our Lenovo laptop these would run at 4800MHz as well due to limitations of the Intel Core i5-13500HX CPU.

The product is shipped inside a simple, sealed plastic enclosure, which allows the potential customer to see how the modules do actually look like even before deciding on the purchase:

The leaflet found underneath does inform the user that we are dealing with a dual-channel kit with a total capacity of 32GB, while the running frequency is 4800MHz:

On the back side, we will get a QR code in order to activate the product warranty, the product name but also its serial number:

Installation instructions are available inside:

The kit consists of two separate modules:

Each module does come with 8 ICs and a small sticker attached to the frontal area of the PCB; on the sticker we will note the product code name, the serial number, the CAS latency but also the capacity:

The modules are single-sided since there are no components on the opposite side:

The ICs are made by Micron, with the D8BNH code name, but feature Silicon Power stamps on top as well:

The first step would be to remove the old 2x8GB kit and install the new one:

Surprisingly, even if the CPU does only support RAM up to 4800MHz, Lenovo has installed two SK Hynix DDR5-5600MHz modules, mostly available for purchase on OEM channels: