Raspberry Pi 2 B+ Expanded RAM

Ram is surface mounted so no you can not add ram.

Bill Hoffer is "very" correct but a little to the point, without explaining to much..

But nevertheless very exact indeed, the RAM upon the development board is a fixed item which cannot be upgraded in its current form.

I do wonder though if someone was very handy indeed with a soldering iron and a RAM chip avaliable that someone could come along, unsolder the current RAM chip itself and use the same branded but larger variety in its place.

I would be happy to test this theory out and would even endeavour to the point of expressing a notion of a project where by someone creates some kind of way to connect a normal say, PC stick of RAM addition to add to the raspberry board either in replacement or by some other means even to the point of it being used like a RAMdisk device..

Anyway, could be pie in the sky and way out of my depth but I have seen people remove embedded RAM chips and replacing them with larger versions in the past but not on the raspberry board itself..

Mainly cell/mobile phones and that sort of thing..

Afterall, what's the price to purchase an older or used raspberry board, try it out for you self and just see what happens.. The only loss is time, patience and maybe a few quid.. But think of what could come of a simple idea like this, if a little tricky and labour intensive

It's just lovely to see people push the boundaries a little with ideas and giving them a go at.. Sorry if this reply alarms anyone.. Just a thought eh..

Yeah I've done a bit of research into what I was requiring and came to a couple conclusions about it.

Is it possible? Probably, it's just a matter of finding a similar in dimensions chip with the same pin layout and carefully soldering it in place. But in most likelihood it wouldn't give me the desired outcome but is definitely a good idea to try.

Ive also discovered that the place that sold me the pi advertised it wrong (I'm in Japan and they had to try and translate it) so my board is in fact the raspberry pi 1b+. In my research however I did find out that by upgrading to the raspberry pi 3 I will get the processing speed and the desired ram that is required for what I'm working with.

And since I'll have the older board, I can test out upgrading the ram chip on it and seeing if it is indeed possible. If not, no harm no foul since I've already upgraded which raspberry pi I'm using anyways. If it works, I'll have an emulation station for my tv as well as one for the road.

But it thank you everybody for your replies and input for my question. Helped me out quite a bit and assisted me in the right direction for research.

That's awesome codey, and a quick response too I might add considering I'm in the UK.. There is a fair few network hops between us I bet

I would be most interested in your trial of the RAM upgrade on whatever raspberry board they have sold you

I've gone and had a look around after I commented and prior to you replying to mine and I was going to post a link to the "orange" pi gadget development board, you can clearly see the actual RAM chips on display and even though this kit contains 2GB I reckon further down the line or in a year even this could be upgraded to 4GB

http://www.orangepi.org/orangepiplus2/

Lets see how you get along, no rush but keep us informed of you're progress regardless because it could be quite interesting and while that's going along I will get myself another secondhand board and try something out myself

Haha yeah, I'm a few hours ahead of ya so it's only 1115 in the morning here.

I might integrate it in with another board just to see what happens, should be interesting to see what I can get out of it.

yeah I checked out that orange pi board and it since it says it's fully capable of integrating with the raspberry pi I might mix the two boards just because I can haha. Then figure out what it can be used for.

But I'll definitely keep updating here when I've made progress. Always good to get input from others. Till I can do all that though, I'm gonna play some super Mario on my portable emulation station I made last week haha

Although the RAM is fixed, Linux can allocate space on a USB stick for swapping to allow more working storage in RAM.https://www.linux.com/news/all-about-linux-swap-space  will explain how to setup.

Clem

yes I did keep it simple and direct for a reason. I have desoldered surface mount parts, and I used the solder reflow oven i built based on the one Ben and his guest created in a early episode, to resolder items. You need a specialized tip on your iron and hands incredibly steady so not to flow solder across pads which will cause shorts when the new chip would be soldered back on.

Next you will more than likely have to salvage the ram from a source, making sure that its is the right shape and size so it will fit the location of the board, since its hard to find sites that sell surface mounted ram.

Now you have to make sure the version of the Pi you have can hold the amount of ram you want to use in its BIOS. Older laptops and desktop computers that don't use the UEFI bios, which all Windows 8 and Windows 10 system uses, could not use  more than  24 gigs ram. After you hit the max amount of ram, any reaming amount of ram does not show and can not be used. There is a probally a reason they don't use more ram versus the orange pi and apple pis who do use 2 gigs.

Finally you need to carefully solder the new ram on to the board making sure not to overheat the ram with your solder iron or reflow oven, which will fry the ram, and not flowing solder across pads causing shorts or breaking any solder likes leaving or entering the ram.

Finally Clem has given the easiest method to do what you want to do.

You might be able to use a Super Talent Express Dram Disk.

USB 3.0 Express Dram Disk USB Flash Drives | Super Talent Technology

You might need an adapter to convert USB3 to USB2.