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August 19th, 2017 10:00
Precision M4500 RAM Issue (Won't go past 4GB)
Ok so I have a VERY odd scenario and I wanted to run it past the Dell community to see if my best guess on this is accurate.
The system powers on and works just fin with a 2GB or a 4GB stick in DIMM A. 8GB stick it will not POST. Now... even stranger... Adding any memory at all to DIMM B (whether DIMM A is filled or not) ALSO causes the system not to POST. So it seems like the max memory I can have in this system, possibly due to DIMM B being faulty, is 4 GB yet the max supported is 16 so why won't an 8 GB work in DIMM A?
Any thoughts? Suggestions? Cause aside from DIMM B being fried and DIMM A only accepting 4GB or lower the system is working fantastic but the person this system is for wants 8GB RAM. Thanks in advance!
Oh Also, I did update the BIOS and no luck.
jphughan
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August 19th, 2017 11:00
Sometimes there's a limitation on number of BANKS per memory module that a chipset will support, and different memory modules can achieve the same capacity with a different number of banks, so that might account for why the 8GB module you're trying doesn't work. In terms of the DIMM B issue, I wonder if maybe the system requires DIMM A to be populated for DIMM B to work at all, but the mismatch of the memory you're trying in terms of capacity, vendor, speed, banks, etc might be preventing your specific configuration from working. It might be interesting to try an exactly matched pair of DIMMs, just to see if DIMM B might be working after all. Requiring DIMM A to be populated would surprise me a little bit, but I've seen very finicky memory requirements on motherboards/chipsets over the years.
Also, this is admittedly not an authoritative source (although it has usually proven very reliable), but Crucial's memory selector interface indicates that 16GB is only supported on the M4500 when equipped with a quad-core CPU; dual-core CPU models are limited to 8GB. Maybe the CPUs used in that system model had different memory controllers.