Motherboard vs. CPU RAM address ability

[techlists at phpcoderusa.com]

Hi,

As you may recall I had a issue with my wife's computer needing more 
RAM. It is a Dell that shipped with Win 10 Pro and 4GB of RAM.  Was very 
very slow.  The CPU would address 64GB of RAM however the motherboard 
would only handle 32GB of RAM.  This is a Dell box.

Today I am dealing with the same issue as with my wife's computer - RAM 
wise.

I have a 7 year old HP laptop that runs Win 10 Pro and has 8GB of RAM.  
I need more RAM because I want to run Windows, video editing software, a 
browser with 2 or 3 tabs open, VirtualBox, a LAMP stack VM on 
VirtualBox, and Visual Studio Code all at once.  Seems like a lot for 
8GB of RAM.

I am not a hardware guy so I am very careful what I do.

I opened the laptop to identify what type of RAM it had installed.  
Thankfully they put in one 8GB stick leaving a second RAM slot.

In my research I discovered the CPU would address 32GB of RAM.  HP told 
me the motherboard would only handle 16GB of RAM.  So today I ordered an 
8GB stick of RAM.  Hopefully I can limp along with this configuration 
until Windows 10 end of life and at that point or maybe sooner I can run 
Linux exclusively except for my wife who works in a place that runs 
Window so she needs windows.

I see a pattern here.  At least for me I have run into this problem 
twice in less than a year.

I think they do this so one does not buy a cheaper computer and upgrade 
is as they go.  I think they want one to buy a more expensive product if 
one needs more RAM, etc.

I ran into a different problem years ago. I had bought several cheap 
Dell desktop computers and later wanted to add a couple more monitors.  
The CPU could handle 3 monitors, however the motherboard could only 
handle 1 monitor.  I had to buy an add-on video card.

Just thought I would share my experience.

Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Keith