HP First, I want to say that this is the most favorite of the PCs that I’ve owned over the years and is my new daily workhorse for browsing, research, and writing at home. With an upgrade to a solid-state drive, it’s nearly silent, but I found myself needing more than 4 GB of RAM with some of the workloads I place on it, namely, virtual machines.
What RAM is Compatible With an HP ProDesk 600 G1 DM?
The ProDesk 600 G1 mini desktop PC uses DDR3 SODIMMs, specifically, ones rated PC3-12800. These are smaller than the memory modules that are made for larger sized desktops, so to accommodate the smaller size of these PCs, they use the same modules designed for laptops. There are two slots on the motherboard of these PCs that can support up to 8 GB of memory each, for a total capacity of 16 GB of RAM. For my needs, that’s slight overkill and I settled on upgrading to 8 GB of RAM. That’s plenty to share between the applications I use in Windows 10, and with a virtual machine that I use to run Ubuntu at the same time for some projects that I’m working on.
HP ProDesk 600 G1 DM Compatible Memory
Step 1 - Power off and Unplug
Start by shutting your PC down and disconnecting the power adapter and any peripherals or other USB devices.
Step 2 - Remove the Cover
On the rear of your mini desktop, there is a single thumb-screw that secures the top cover to the chassis. Unscrew this and slide the cover from back to front and lift it off and set it aside. Jeremiah Simpkins (self)
Step 3 - Move the Hard Drive out of the Way
Inside, the most you’ll see right away are the CPU heatsink/fan and the hard drive. Start removing the hard drive by disconnecting the SATA plug from the motherboard. This will be the thick, short black cable that plugs in near the rear-corner of board. Then slide the hard drive out by holding the lock tab down, at the corner of the hard drive closest to the red and black power plug in. Jeremiah Simpkins (self) The power cable for the hard drive can be left connected and the drive laid to the side in a position that doesn’t strain the connector.
Step 4 - Install Additional RAM
With the memory module slots now exposed, you can do one of two things. Remove any existing modules by slightly spreading the clips on the sides with your fingers until the modules pop-up at an angle to be slid out if you’re maxing one of these mini desktops out with 16 GB of RAM total. Jeremiah Simpkins (self) Alternatively, you can install an additional 4 GB module along with the typically pre-existing 4 GB module to give your PC a total of 8 GB of RAM. In general, memory upgrades offer the best performance when you use pairs of memory modules that are of the same size.
Step 5 - Reassemble and Power on
After installing new RAM, reverse the steps above by sliding the hard drive back into its bracket, plug the SATA cable back into the port on the motherboard, place the cover back on and slide it into place and tighten the thumb-screw in the rear. Then reconnect the power adapter, any peripherals, or other devices and power on.
You’ll likely be greeted with a message confirming that the amount of installed memory has been changed. To proceed, simply acknowledge it by pressing the F1 key on your keyboard.
Conclusion
It really is as simple as that, and for such a small PC, this is perhaps one of the easier upgrades you can perform. While SSDs tend to provide the most performance boost these days, having a decent amount of system memory installed can go a long way to making sure that multiple apps can run smoothly at the same time. These instructions also apply to the HP EliteDesk 800 G1 DM as that model shares the same chassis and board layout as the ProDesk 600 G1 DM. I hope that if you stumbled upon these instructions that they helped you add more usefulness to your mini desktop PC or taught you something new. © 2020 Jeremiah Simpkins
