17 R5, 64GB of RAM?

Precisely because the board has enough address lines to support 32 G of RAM total - but not enough to support more than that.

Though there are those who'll claim the CPU does support 64 G of RAM -- and it does -- that's only part of the story.  The mainboard has to have enough address lines to support that much RAM, and it's reasonably clear if only from black-box circumstantial evidence, that this one does not.

There can be a host of reasons for this - marketing and economics prime among them.  When Dell (and every other system seller) hands a list of specifications to the company doing the design, engineering and manufacturing work, part of that spec set is cost.  The manufacturer (and most recent Alienware systems are built by Compal Electronics) designs the boards to meet the specifications they're given.

There are indeed systems that will take more RAM than the manufacturer supports, but given this thread, this model is not among them.

I am about fed up with Dell's forum software -- my last post was flagged as "spam" for some reason ( maybe because I'm using a VPN? I've turned it off for now to see if that makes a difference ) :

"This reply was marked as spam and has been removed. If you believe this is an error, submit an abuse report. "

Again, sorry if this is a dupe.

@ejn63  Oh, but the mainboard *does* have enough address lines! ‌‌ ‌‌ When I tested two 32GiB Samsung SO-DIMMs in my AW 17 R5, not only did *the entire and correct RAM capacity show up in the BIOS*, *but*, *it also showed up in Dell's pre-boot diagnostics*, *and*, *PassMark's MemTest86 saw the entire 64GiB of RAM and I was able to run multiple multi-hour complete passes over the memory and no errors were detected* ( see eg. here ).

To me, the above indicates that either Dell has instituted a BIOS lockout for anything greater than 64GiB, or, the BIOS is buggy and doesn't read the SPD data correctly or doesn't apply the correct SPD data voltage and frequency. The aforementioned RAM *works fine in my Intel NUC8i7BEH* which only *officially* supports 32GiB of RAM. In the case of the NUC, its BIOS correctly reads the SPD data and sets up the correct voltages, and timings for a frequency of 2400MHz.

As far as I can tell, Dell announced in 2018 that their AW CC software would support GPU and memory overclocking / tweaking, but, Dell never delivered ( see eg. here or here ).

Regards,

jdb2

Did you download the intel XTU app as I said in my video?

Because this is the version I downloaded which can do the memory over clocking and voltage tuning plus the timings:

https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/16919/

@jdb2, I am very interested to know what did Dell customer service told you regardless of this issue? I am planning to call dell support everyday until they will add this feature to the bios,

Huge respect for your research about this problem so far

I don't think you understand @R5 Try Hard ok?

@jdb2 is a literal legend for managing to even get 64Gb of RAM to appear in the BIOS, Memory testing and even the ePSA diagnostics test!

People here know him as the 17 R5 wizard so you can pretty much ask him anything.

We're still looking for a solution though that'll allow for 64Gb of RAM to be Bootable.

Hello! I also had *the entire and correct RAM capacity show up in the BIOS*, and, *it also showed up and passed all tests in Dell's pre-boot diagnostics*  With my Kingston HX426S16IB/32 1.2v memory kit, based on Micron memory. But the Windows 10 OS can't boot well. Well, today I'm totally disappointed with the Alienware hardware and looking for a new laptop from another manufacturer.

@jdb2 maybe I will try to reflash my memory kit to 2400 MHz soon, did you tried this?

It’s a firmware issue where the bios can read it correctly when it boots up but for some reason when it tried to load the OS it crashed.

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@fdobrotv wrote:

 

[snip]

@jdb2 maybe I will try to reflash my memory kit to 2400 MHz soon, did you tried this?q

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@fdobrotvActually, I have thought of reprogramming the SPD chip. The reason why I'm hesitant though is that the only up-to-date software I know of which can do this doesn't have my full trust. This means that I may have to buy specialized hardware which is big $$$. Furthermore, I really don't want to brick $200-$300 worth of RAM because of any mistakes I might make in reprogramming the SPD chip. Perhaps you could relate your experiences in doing this?

Regards,

jdb2

I think it might be reading the data of the SPD chip and saying hey this is above what we recommend for this motherboard.

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@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006 wrote:

I think it might be reading the data of the SPD chip and saying hey this is above what we recommend for this motherboard.

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@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006  Actually, the SPD chip usually has several profiles on it from which the BIOS can select and also there's usually a "fallback profile" which is usually at a much lower frequency which the BIOS can use if it decides that none of the other profiles are acceptable. Furthermore, more advanced BIOSs can automatically set up the RAM voltage, timings and frequency irregardless of what the "maximum performance" profile indicates. The fact that the same 64GiB SO-DIMMs which won't allow normal OSs to boot on my AW 17 R5 work *perfectly* at around 2400MHz on my Intel NUC suggests to me that it's either a Dell software lockout in the BIOS, or, more likely, just a buggy BIOS that can't seem to select the correct SPD profile.

jdb2

I’m having the issue on i9 model. Really disappointing because I paid for every option they had to be limited to 32gb ram! 

Weird?

that doesn’t make any sense unless it’s physically an electrical issue or something blocking it.