Cq-42 168-tu...16gb Ram?

[w00tman]

Hey all.

I have a Compaq CQ-42 168-TU,
with 8 GB of RAM and a 160 GB Intel SSD.

I do a lot of automotive modelling in CATIA and NX;
and my current configuration,
while somewhat livable,
gets really slow with large assemblies,
or when I'm modelling surfaces that are a bit too complex.

I've been thinking of upping the RAM to 16GB,
as this is probably the only thing left that I guess I could upgrade in order to get better performance;
but both the spec sheet on the HP site and on the Intel site for the processor (I3 M350) state that the max supported RAM is 8GB.

So...what would happen if I replace the two 4GB sticks with two 8GB sticks?
Would the OS actually recognise the extra RAM (I'm running Win 7 Ultimate x64)?
Or would my laptop fall apart completely?

[EvolutionX]

Well Windows 7 will recognize 16gb of RAM. But since the motherboard your plugging it into only recognizes up to 8gb. So unfortunately you can only run 8gb on that particular machine.