Dell XPS 8700 RAM upgrade or addition?

Check out Crucial for compatible RAM for the XPS 8700. If they recommend it for a specific PC, they guarantee it works or they take it back.

You can use faster RAM with the existing RAM, but all of it will run at the speed of the slowest RAM.

Appears you have 8 GB now (2x4 GB). So the max you can add will be another 16 GB (2x8 GB) for total of 24 GB, which is a supported config. Even if all old+new RAM runs at the speed of the slowest, having 3x more RAM may well make up for any speed differences.

If you decide to replace the old RAM, you can go up to 32 GB (4x8 GB).

Of course, you have to decide on your budget. :emotion-5:

EDIT: Keep in mind that if you decide to keep the old RAM and just add more, there's no point going all the way up to DDR3-1866 RAM because it costs more than DDR3-1600 and still will only run at the speed of the slowest RAM that's installed.

I don't know if DDR3-1866 RAM will run at its full speed in this system even though Crucial offers it. Depends on BIOS, chipset, and bus speed. XPS 8700 might be limited to 1600 MHz.  Maybe Crucial knows..?

You can't use DDR4 - it's a different slot and a different voltage...

So, if i want to totally hot-rod my Dell XPS 8700 I could pack it with 32 GB of  DDR3-1866 RAM?

Another question, can I put DDR4 RAM in this motherboard? Would it work? How much faster is DDR4 than DDR3 RAM?

Wondering if someone from Dell support can confirm the Absolute fastest RAM I can put in my Dell XPS 8700 motherboard?

Dell? Are you there?

No, it did not answer my question. THough Cruicial did. They said i could put this RAM in my PC:

Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3L-1866 UDIMM
part # : CT7373154
$68.39
QTY
1
update
Remove DDR3 PC3-14900 • CL=13 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1866 • 1.35V • 1024Meg x 64 •
$68.39 each.

Yes, you can put that RAM in your PC, but did they guarantee it will run at 1866 MHz? Or will it step down to 1600 MHz? You might search these forums to see if anybody has reported using 1866 MHz RAM in this model.

Dell likely hasn't tested anything faster than 1600 MHz in this model so they'd only say it's qualified for 1600 MHz RAM.

duplicate post?

Eventually I was able to get the timings to 7-9-8-18 1T and for some tasks was slighly faster. This was with 200 Milli-volts added to System Agent offset which helps the on-cpu memory controller.

Later I dropped this back to 9-9-9-24 1T and reduced the SA offset to 20 millivolts and the system is stable.

My initial opinion that CL9 was not better than CL11 was not accurate.

Side note:

On my non-dell, I run DDR3 2400 memory with  timings at 10-12-11-31 and it is much faster than a typical 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 when doing any encoding or memory intensive work. 

The faster memory does improve gaming slightly, but only slightly. It makes the most different when compressing files or encrypting or encoding or decoding streams of data.

I spent some time overclocking the memory on my 8700 but the limitation is you cannot over volt the memory which is needed typically for anything above 1600 Mhz.

here is where I posted my changes. (had to edit this because my post got "moderated" because of a URL).

http:// forums DOT hardware-revolution DOT com/showthread.php?tid=5321

First pass:

Default: 11-11-11-28-1T 1600Mhz 

9-9-9-24-1T 1600Mhz |-- Meh, no difference.
8-x-x-24-1T | 1600Mhz |-- unstable at any combinations of the secondary timings with CAS 8

increased the multipler to 14x, but kept timings at CL11
11-11-11-28-1T | 1866Mhz |-- YEAH, a little faster 

Novabench was faster across the board. faster memory bandwidth, faster FPS, faster CPU, even faster disk access. 

increased the multipler to 16x, but kept timings at CL11
11-11-11-28-1T | 2133Mhz |-- Wow, a little faster still. Oops, crashed bringing up CPUz 

Back to 1866, CL 11, played a few mins of assassin's creed 4 and it even felt a little smoother.

Went to bed, put the system to sleep.

Next day, woke the system from a keyboard press. 4 beeps, power cycle, 4 beeps power cycle, 4 beeps, ( BOOOOO ). had to hard power down the system. 

The power up watchdog reset the bios and it was back to where it was before I started.

Net-Net, it was fun but I'm not sure I can get much out of this since I really can't change what I want to change or I don't know what to change. I cannot boost the memory voltage directly which might make it more stable.

1866 felt snappier than 1600 but maybe I was just me wanting it to feel snappier. I can mess with voltage offsets (like system agent voltage offset) but I'm not sure this will help and I'm not sure what else it might do. I can change the timings for 1866, but this seems like its the game of faster transfer, but longer wait times between transfers.

Another setting I didn't change was the reference clock. Not sure I want to go there. with my BIOS and the i7 4770 I can't change any multipliers so I think I have what I have.

I spent some time overclocking the memory on my 8700 but the limitation is you cannot over volt the memory which is needed typically for anything above 1600 Mhz.

here is where I posted my changes.

http://forums.hardware-revolution.com/showthread.php?tid=5321

First pass:

Default: 11-11-11-28-1T 1600Mhz 

9-9-9-24-1T 1600Mhz |-- Meh, no difference.
8-x-x-24-1T | 1600Mhz |-- unstable at any combinations of the secondary timings with CAS 8

increased the multipler to 14x, but kept timings at CL11
11-11-11-28-1T | 1866Mhz |-- YEAH, a little faster 

Novabench was faster across the board. faster memory bandwidth, faster FPS, faster CPU, even faster disk access. 

increased the multipler to 16x, but kept timings at CL11
11-11-11-28-1T | 2133Mhz |-- Wow, a little faster still. Oops, crashed bringing up CPUz 

Back to 1866, CL 11, played a few mins of assassin's creed 4 and it even felt a little smoother.

Went to bed, put the system to sleep.

Next day, woke the system from a keyboard press. 4 beeps, power cycle, 4 beeps power cycle, 4 beeps, ( BOOOOO ). had to hard power down the system. 

The power up watchdog reset the bios and it was back to where it was before I started.

Net-Net, it was fun but I'm not sure I can get much out of this since I really can't change what I want to change or I don't know what to change. I cannot boost the memory voltage directly which might make it more stable.

1866 felt snappier than 1600 but maybe I was just me wanting it to feel snappier. I can mess with voltage offsets (like system agent voltage offset) but I'm not sure this will help and I'm not sure what else it might do. I can change the timings for 1866, but this seems like its the game of faster transfer, but longer wait times between transfers.

Another setting I didn't change was the reference clock. Not sure I want to go there. with my BIOS and the i7 4770 I can't change any multipliers so I think I have what I have.

>On my non-dell, I run DDR3 2400 memory with  timings at 10-12-11-31 and it is much faster than a typical 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 when doing any encoding or memory intensive work.<

So what are you saying proved to be the best memory and settings to get for the XPS 8700 i7-4790?

Thanks!

On my xps 8700 ( i7 4770) Z87 motherboard there is no a way ( or none that I have find to change memory voltage)

Over-volting the memory is needed for faster speeds.

Changing the timings and sub-timings can be done, and the best timings I was able to obtain are below. This also included a +200 millivolt System Agent Offset which gives a little more voltage to the on-chip memory controller. I recall lowering the SA offset to +100 mVolt.

http://forums.hardware-revolution.com/attachment.php?aid=184

and the original timings were: 

http://forums.hardware-revolution.com/attachment.php?aid=183

Note: this only improved peformance of encoding, decoding and other CPU/Memory intensive work. It had zero improvement on gaming. When I transitioned the system to a family member I set timings to 9-9-9-24-1T and reduced the SA offset to zero since none of the workloads benefited from faster memory.

more details are here. I can't post the URL without getting my post moderated so replace the DOT with a .

forums DOT hardware-revolution.com/showthread.php?tid=5321&page=2