Do you need to upgrade your Dell Inspiron 15 5570 memory?

8GB is the bare minimum

Everything is becoming more memory intensive. Even using Chrome with multiple tabs open on a Windows 10 machine is enough for your memory usage to spike and for you to experience slowdowns and laggy behavior. When you start using programs like video editors and Photoshop, you'll see how quickly 4GB become an unusable mess.

Of course, good memory management from you is important but the fact that you need to think about management shows that memory allocation is a premium. The boost from 4GB to 8GB will make everything work far smoother and allow you to use your laptop for any task you want, hopefully, more than one task at a time.

The Intel Optane memory isn't really memory

While the specifications for the Inspiron 5570 says the laptop has 20GB of memory, really 16GB of that comes from the Intel Optane SSD. It works by connecting to your hard drive and caching important files to help speed up the processes. There is a lot of magic at work here that I don't really understand, but from what I've seen the Optane memory is still essentially a Solid State Drive — limited by the bus speed of your computers PCI-e interface — pretending it's RAM. It may be a great idea and work really well but I don't think it is a replacement for a good amount of RAM.

Optane works well alongside the conventional 4GB of memory available on the Inspiron 5570 but the upgrade to 8GB of RAM will make a huge difference to your more intensive programs.

Memory is cheaper than you think

With 4GB of memory that's compatible with the Inspiron 5570 costing just $35, there really is no reason not to upgrade. The 5570 has two memory slots with one taken up by the standard 4GB it comes with so purchasing one more 4GB makes perfect sense.

The removal of the rear plate can be a little tricky, since there are a lot of screws to get through, but once you have the back off, the memory is easy to install and you should be able to see results instantly.

Moving up to 16GB may put a dent on your wallet, however. At $132 for 16GB that upgrade seems unneeded unless you are doing memory heavy jobs like video or photo editing. I would stick the 4GB upgrade, for now, doubling your total to 8GB.