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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
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I am going to upgrade the RAM on my RN524X and just wanted to pass along information as I go for anyone in the future seeking the same help, since this procedure will VOID your warranty, Netgear will not provide any information about this.
In a future post I will give complete instructions for how to dissassemble the RN524X in order to access the RAM sticks.
I dissaseembled mine and found it had a single stick of RAM (see attached image).
The product ID TS512MSH72V1H seems to be what is in my ReadyNAS..which is a single stick of 4G Ram. Searching on this product number comes to this page: https://www.transcend-info.com/Products/No-689
It doesn't quite match the page description exactly as the page in Transend's site says its 1Rx4, and the stick that is in the Readynas says 1Rx8.
In any case, that is what is in there. I am going to order another 4GB matching stick if I feel confident I can find an exact match. If not I will buy two new sticks of something maybe 8GB each, but we'll see. Once I have it all working I will provide complete dissassembly instructions, its not too hard, but probably more than most people would want to do. And it does VOID the warranty.
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Alright just wanted to report back again, the machine has been running great for a week with just the one good module installed, so all is good now, the memory was spec'd fine. The important point there was that one of the modules was/is faulty and the boot menu memory test did not spot that after running 25 hours with both modules installed. It did find come up more directly as a problem when running the boot menu memtest with just the one faulty module installed, the tester didn't spot it, but it crashed within 5 minutes after starting the test, two times in a row. And with that module installed (or both), the machine would boot up and run for a while, for hours..then spotaneously crash at some point, usually under some kind of CPU load...forcing a raid resync everytime, which was concerning to be honest, hopefully the data was not compromised, but anyway... seems to be sailing smooth now with just one 16gb module installed (see spec above). The faulty one has been sent back to HK for a refund. 16gb is more then enough anyway, I didn't really need 32gb.
So what performance differences do I notice after a week running smooth?
- a lot more caching memory is available and I notice that when I mount the raid from my mac over SMB, it is able to retrieve the folder contents list of certain folders with thousands of files, MUCH faster then before. This must be because that information is getting cached more now. However, i also notice that SMB process seems to run a little bit every once in a while to build that cache again when it needs to. But before I often had to wait minutes to open a folder and wait to see the conents (7000 files). Now it is often immediate.
- Before I had to setup a cron job to start crashplan and midnight and stop it in the morning because it was using nearly all of the factory 4gb memory. Now I can easily leave it running all day long and it barely causes the CPU to blink.
- Before gitlab was pretty much unusable with only 4gb of memory. Gitlab specs a need for 8gb+, and gitlab now runs perfectly fine and leaving it running all day, once it starts up, the CPU is having no problems.
- I am able to have up and running at all times gitlab+postgres, docker, portainer, crashplan, wordpress+MySQL, qdirStat, sabnzbd, sickchill and plex. No problems with memory, its using most of time only about 6gb of memory, and a nice large cache.
I do not think most people need to upgrade the memory on this box. I did so mainly to run gitlab, and also because crashplan was pushing it to the limit. What I can say is that if you have more advanced needs and are creatively using this box for stuff like I am, then its a pretty easy upgrade, once you locate the memory (not easy) and presuming the memory is not bad..which I might have just got unlucky that time.
Marking this thread as solved.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
See attached image for the backside of the ram stick.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
I'm thinking one or two of these might work: https://www.amazon.com/8GB-DDR4-2133-ECC-SO-DIMM-2RX8/dp/B00R29YQU2
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
Or better yet, just one of these: https://www.newegg.com/p/0RM-0020-00165?item=9SIAKACA0X8350&source=region&nm_mc=knc-googlemkp-pc&cm_...
Then I'd have 16GB with an option to buy another one someday if that turned out to not be enough, which is unlikely.
Does anyone have any other feedback they'd like to make before I order something?
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
The info on the Trancend page is inconsistent. It lists the 4GB device as having 512x8 chips, but then says the stick is 1RX4. That can't be. They don't show the back side, but I suspect it's really the 1RX8 your stick indicates.
The only potential problem with getting the larger sick is what is the max memory on that NAS. As you say, Netgear doesn't seem to want to share that information.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
My second post on this thread has a photo of the backside of the stick. There are 4 IC's on it. Maybe Transcend's sticker is wrong?
According to Netgear, they did already say on other threads that this box can support up to 32GB memory (16GBx2).
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
x4 means each chip has a 4-bit bus. On x8, each has 8 bits. So, it takes twice as many chips for an x4 (SO)DIMM compared to an x8. Yours has 8 (one rank, or 1R) 8-bit chips to make the 64-bit bus, so is a 1RX8 SODIMM because of the x8 archetecture of the chips, not the 8 chips. The chart on the Trancend page says all of the ones listed use 8-bit chips, which would mean the modules are all x8 as well. The 4GB would have 8 512MB chips, (aka 1RX8) the 8GB would have 16 (two ranks) 512MB (2RX8), and the 16GB would have 16 1GB (also 2RX8). I'd be surprised if anyone is making DDR4 SODIMMs with an x4 archetecture, what with the limited board space and not much call for small capacity sticks..
Back in the PC2 RAM days, some motherboards were picky about x4 (aka "high density) vs, x8 (aka "low density"). The Pro6 is one such product -- it does not support x4 RAM. I don't think that's much of a problem with DDR4. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
that all makes sense, but its still not clear to me why theproduct info on their webpage does not match the sticker on my stick with the same model # in terms of 1xR4 vs 1xR8.
anyway, I think I am just going to pull out this 4gb stick and buy one 16gb stick so I don't have to worry bout exactly matching what I have. In theory, should work I guess?
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
I think it's just a typo on their web page. Like I said, it is impossible for everything there to be correct -- it's self contradictary.
Yes, I suspect that replacing with a single 16GB will work just fine.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
Order has been placed. I'll report back results in a few weeks, its a 10 day shipping thing..
Here are instructions for accessing the RAM slots on the RN524X
- Remove the black cover from the unit by removing the neccessary screws (on the back) and slide it back and up.
- Remove the back panel by removing more screws that hold it there. Do not remove the screws holding the fan in place. You will have to unplug the fan from the pin.
- Remove all the screws holding the mothboard down.
- Lift the motherboard straight up first, there is a card that needs to pull out of a socket. Once its out of the socket, then gently tip the motherboard up to show the underside without anytihng else being unplugged.
- RAM will be accessible at that point.
Note - the above will VOID the warranty. I suggest taking photos as you go, especially of the motherboard in case anything comes unplugged that you need to plug back in, but I found all the connectors were very secure. When you put it back together again, carefully line up the socket I mentioned in step#4 and gently push the motherboard down onto the disk IO card.
It will all make sense when you do it, I don't know how to post pictures on these posts or I would.
I will report back after I have the 16GB ram installed and functioning.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
I don't know how to post pictures on these posts or I would.
There's a Photo icon in the tool bar - you click on it and then choose the file(s)s you want to add. These will show up in-line in your post.
Sometimes it can be tricky to get text around the pictures where you want it - generally I switch to html mode when that happens, and put in some placeholder text where I want it. Then switch back to rich text and edit it.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
Hmm, my toolbar doesn't have a photo icon. Maybe only for SUPERUSER's?
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
Hmm, my toolbar doesn't have a photo icon. Maybe only for SUPERUSER's?
No, you should be seeing it.
You can of course add the photos as file attachments.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
Nope. Mine doesn't have it. See attachement. And I can only add one attachment per post also, which would make it tedious at best to make a meaningful tutorial post with photos.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
Nope. Mine doesn't have it.
Wierd. If you can get them to me (PM me a google drive link or something), then I'd be happy to reply here and post them.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
let me work on that. Maybe I can make a PDF also.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
let me work on that. Maybe I can make a PDF also.
The pdf would be good, since you could get the formatting exactly how you want it.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
I'll do that after I recveive the new memory and test it out
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
Here's a PDF for now.
That's a great guide! Thx for taking the time to put it together.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
Alright I do have a technical question while waiting for new RAM to arrive. Do I need to make any changes to my OS to handle the larger ram? What about swap space? It just occurred to me the boot partition is only 4GB, what happens with 16GB of ram? Anyone know if readynas OS is configured in some way specific to 4GB or low memory that should be changed or optimized in some way once there is more memory in there?
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
You don't need to make any changes to the rest of the system. Two existence proofs: the RN716 has 16 GB; the RN628x has 8 GB. You could migrate their disks directly to your system (and vice versa).
The swap partition is 1 GB and already smaller than your physical RAM. Like the OS partition, it is smaller than what you'd see in a general purpose linux system. Changing the size of the swap and OS partitions would require re-partitioning all your disks. I don't know of anyone who's done it (and changing the partition sizes cause problems down the road with expansion).
Note that swap is only needed when you don't have enough RAM (that is, when the virtual memory used by the system is more than it's physical memory).
There is a related linux parameter called "swappiness" that runs from 0-100. 0 means "never swap", and bigger values tell the system to swap more aggressively. The default setting is 60. Netgear sets it to 1 to minimize swapping.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
sounds like the settings are right where I'd want them, though I might consider experimenting with setting swappiness to 0, as suggested by some gitlab admins. But likely it will be fine at the default value.
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Re: RN524X RAM upgrade
@Dewdman42 wrote:
sounds like the settings are right where I'd want them, though I might consider experimenting with setting swappiness to 0, as suggested by some gitlab admins. But likely it will be fine at the default value.
0 was redefined a while back to mean "swapping off". Some of the older advice on setting it to 0 pre-dates that redefinition.
If you try it at 0, let us know what happens.