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July 24th, 2019 20:00

Memory upgrade for inspiron 675 gamer

if this has been answered apologies, I found a few threads all are old.  For sometime now I have had occasional issues getting the computer to start.  Generally the error is 4 amber blinks of the power light on the top of the machine, other than that no activity.  The unit came with a single Kingston 16 gb ram chip.  KXYCOV-MIHS17405AND9 16 GB 2RX8 PC4-2400T-UB1-11.  

As I wanted 32 gb I added a second Kingston chip, they list one and only one chip compatible with this system...I was assuming it would be the identical chip to the one that came with the system but the numbers on the chip are a bit different and it's not running in dual channel mode as far as I can tell.  As near as I can tell these are CAS 17 chips. This pair of chips has been running great for at least a year until the recent 4 blinks issue.

When the blinking light issue occurs generally all I have to do is open the case and swap the chips then it will start and run till the next time it decides to have a problem, lately that happens more and more. I had a support person on a chat tell me four blinks is a "recovery error" not sure what that is...apparently taking the chips out is clearing it???  I did pull the cmos battery and it appears to be good according to my battery tester.  When I've tried to look up diagnostic codes 4 amber blinks is supposed to be memory???

Blaming memory I purchased a pair of (dualchannel) Gskill Flare X (for AMD) F4-2400C15D-32GFXR from newegg.com.  I install them and have swapped them around but no life, same four blinks (amber).  The only difference i see with these chips is they are CAS 15 chips.  To my knowledge if placed in a system designed for a higher (slower) cas the chips will simply run at the slower speed, i.e. these should work.  Dell doesn't have much about tested RAM chips that i can find and G-skill doesn't have a configurator for the dells just motherboard manufacturers.  If Dell even sells a set of dual channnel for this machine I haven't been able to find it and this set was $144.00 I really don't feel it's worth a higher price when i got this machine DDR4 was still nuts expensive, i think I paid nearly two hundred dollars for the extra Kingston i bought (on ebay too).

The machine is under warranty but if it's a simple matter of some new RAM I'm not thrilled about having to send the machine back for that I can handle a ram upgrade and the chips are lifetime warranty so not worried about losing anything.  The last time it was running with the Kingston chip(s) it was having a sort of "freeze" now and then.  I really suspect one of the chips has an issue.  I know to be gentle with RAM slots they still have that satisfying pop when a chip is installed they aren't loose or worn out from constant chip install/removes.

So question is, is there a list of known working properly third party ram?

I know that some RAM has some sort of identification scheme that the motherboard may be reading off the chips in some manner, wondering if this might be going on too.  Hope somebody can provide a few options for third party dual channel that they know works or at least confirm that the G skill should work???

All help appreciated.

 

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20.1K Posts

July 28th, 2019 09:00

You need to identify your model by its full name. Is it Inspiron 5675? 

Check Crucial.com for the correct memory stats. You need to match pairs exactly for best performance. Dell does not usually sell computers with Kingston ram. That must be a recent change. Dell computers are fussy about ram. You should use Dell or Crucial for replacing or adding ram. If it's still under warranty, contact Support again if the Dell Diagnostics shows your original ram is faulty. Dell will replace it and let you install it yourself. 

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