RAM upgrade fail: Dell Studio XPS 7100

Question

I wanted to max out the memory on my wife's Dell Studio XPS 7100. It had 8 GB (2 GB X 4). I intended to replace all four sticks.

I used the Crucial Adviser tool and it recommended 4 GB X 4.

I've installed RAM in the past and am certain it was seated properly, etc., but I just get 4 beeps, amber light and no boot.

Here's the specs of the orig RAM (from speccy):

and the RAM that I attempted to use:

Should this be compatible?

Note: When I upgraded the RAM on my Studio XPS 9100 I used the Crucial Adviser and posted their recommendation here. A Dell user advised that their recommendation was wrong (the RAM wouldn't have been compatible). I followed the advice of the Dell user and it was fine.

(I admit that I am not very familiar with RAM specs.)

Any advice would be appreciated. This RAM upgrade was part of an overall upgrade to this machine (installed a Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD yesterday; I expected the migration for that to be a hassle and for this to be easy). That was perfect.

dg

Mary G · Answer

Contact Crucial Support and they will fix this. They guarantee the memory will work when you use their scanner. IMO 8 gb was perfectly fine for that model. 16gb is overkill and might be the problem. Test by using just 2 of the new sticks and see if that works. If it does--Consider just returning the memory and keeping the old 8 gb.

Make sure the bios is the latest one available at Dell Downloads.A06 --

www.dell.com/.../configuration

dg27 · Answer

Thanks, Mary. I did confirm that I have the latest BIOS (A06)--thanks so much for providing the link.

My wife has this 7100; I have the 9100. We are both power users of Adobe Creative Suite 6; Photoshop is very RAM intensive and I found that when I maxed out the RAM on the 9100 to 24 GB it made a big difference. Later I upgraded to an SSD.

For my wife's machine I decided to follow the same path: I upgraded to a Samsung 850 Pro SSD and planned to max out the RAM.

Using two of the new sticks would leave me with 8 GB (what I have now). Are you suggesting I try 2 X 4B (the new) and 2 X 2 GB (the old) for 12 GB?

Right now I have the old 8 GB in there and it's working fine.

Thanks for your help.

dg

dg27 · Answer

I did some research. Crucial doesn't have anything that's 1333 MHz. They already processed my RMA request.

Here's the specs for Dell's suggested upgrade:

Looking on NewEgg I see four that might be compatible:

The two specs I'm unsure of are latency and timing (those vary on these four sets). I don't see those on Dell's specs.

If I decide to go ahead with this, would any of these four work?

Thanks for any advice anyone can provide.

dg

dg27 · Answer

Went with two of these (for 16 GB total) and it worked out fine:

CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M2A1333C9

Installing a Samsung 850 Pro plus maxing out the memory have made programs like Photoshop run much more quickly. This has given new life to the 7100.

Locked Topics – Desktops General

RAM upgrade fail: Dell Studio XPS 7100

Was this post helpful?