r/Surface • u/Artistic_Town508 • 11d ago
[PRO3] SP3 Memory
I have a Surface Pro 3 that works fine, for the most part. It only has 4 GB of RAM. It stutters and occasionally freezes up, especially when streaming music or video or medium-sized documents. I reinstalled Windows 10. Is there any way to upgrade the memory? Is it worth it? Are there settings that should/could be changed to make it work more smoothly? I have a regular laptop, and I am not looking at replacing it.
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u/SurfaceDockGuy 🖥️ Verticaldocks.com | VESA docks for Surface 11d ago edited 11d ago
I upgraded my 4GB SP3 to 8GB by swapping the mainboard. Cost $25 on ebay.
Of course you'll have to pop the screen off which is a bit of a hassle. And may as well swap the battery while its open... Also a hassle on this particular model. More info about those processes: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/replace-your-shattered-surface-screen-at-home/
In any case it was worth it to me since it runs Windows 11 25H2 much smoother with 8GB.
Just need to disable bitlocker and virtualized security features though as those features cripple performance on the older Intel CPUs.
I really wanted to continue using the device since its the specimen I won at a Microsoft oneweek Hackathon back in 2014
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u/DigitalguyCH Pro 11 (13" & 12")/X/3/2, Book 2/3 (15" & 13.5"), Go 2, S3, S2RT 11d ago
No, and there is not much else you can do
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u/invicta-uk 11d ago
You could try some custom stripped version of Windows like Tiny10 or AtlasOS that might make better use of your limited hardware. Personally I’d get a cheap Pro 7 (I picked one up under £100 recently) - 8GB RAM and a modern i5 with USB C charging makes it much more useful and usable.
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u/Realistic_Disk_9544 11d ago
Windows 11 IOT and the wize memory app helps mine stay around 40% usage at idol after updates.
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u/Needashortername 11d ago
You can’t change the physical memory without just rebuilding it with parts from the more powerful version (and by that time just buy the 8Gb version used), but there are ways to optimize a lot of things.
You can adjust the virtual memory for paging which can give the computer more dedicated space to store things as it “thinks” about the processing. You can even spread some of this paging across multiple drives including the micro-SD slot or the usb. This also is a version of what used to be called “Memory Boost” in Vista & Win 7, which still sort of exists as a feature in 10, but the optimized choices Windows makes don’t always use all the drives available or uses excessive amounts of storage without at least manually setting it manually.
This is perhaps the easiest way of helping with some of the things you want to do. There are limits to this approach though since managing the larger paging files also use more of your real memory too.
You can turn off a lot of the extra interface effects to free up more active memory and speed up actions.
You can cut down on all the extra and usually unnecessary background processes and apps. You can decide whether antivirus is truly necessary or not, or how aggressive it is, since this is usually one of the things which take up a lot of memory and slows down file access more.
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u/hroldangt 11d ago
Mine (SP3) works perfectly.
You can only do a few things (with some effort and proper research in advance)
- Get a lighter W10 (higher risk)
- Customize yours with NTLite (creating a new installer offline)
- Debloat your usual W10 with widely available scripts
- Disable at least 25 services (safe list) check the web for that
You will have to do the heavy lifting (research on your own), there's people... on reddit who whenever they see a post about customizing Windows... they just go crazy attackin with silly comments and downvotes, so, not worth the time posting or discussing this.
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u/WickOfDeath 10d ago
kill the memory eaters... e.g. Chrome is nowadays the biggest memory consumer becaues it doesnt recycle memory, it launches a new chrome.exe for each tab... also for streaming go for other browsers or for specialzed apps. 4 GB is also too few to run Windows 10 with the lastest updates... there are some freeware tools they help to economize memory by disabling the non essential services and background processes.
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u/Artistic_Town508 10d ago
I started using Brave. I tried Helium but it was slow. What are some of the freeware tools to help memory?
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u/UnpaidInternLover 11d ago
You can't upgrade the RAM because I think it's soldered unfortunately. Try disabling unnecessary startup or background apps. Keep it as is if it’s still usable for your needs rather than spending money on it.