Inspiron 17 7786 M.2 and HDD Upgrades

Yea I was just looking at a desktop Dell and sure enough, they are actually putting in only single sticks of RAM. I guess most people don't have any idea that there advertised RAM Speed is actually on half that speed. I think the one I'm looking at I'll just get 4 GB and then drop in a couple of 8gb 16 is plenty for what that unit will be doing. and I'll have a perfect match. Usually, if you match the timings and voltages Dual channel will work fine, some of the off the wall stuff these companies drop in can be hard to match up too.

I use Hwinfor64

It will do a lot more than just read your ram in fact pretty much everything in your notebook including CPU and GPU Temps fan speeds, Model and serial numbers of installed modules ports pretty good free program.

@Clintlgm 

Sorry but Single channel or Dual channel memory the speed should always stay the same!!!

The Data architecture is different and the speed does not change!!!

Dual-channel-enabled memory controllers utilize two 64-bit data channels, resulting in a total bandwidth of 128-bits, to move data from RAM to the CPU.

I just removed one SIM and used CPUz and Hwinfor64 no change in memory speed.

Try it and see what you find.

Regards,

U2

Actually, I did this last night after all this conversation about RAM, My 7386 has 16 GB of 2400 MHz RAM. Well, guess what it's reading 600MHz. Not believing this I opened up my notebook and guess what the RAM is not accessible without removing the Motherboard not only that my service manual has no reference as to how to upgrade or change out this RAM.

As to how Dual Channel work https://us.answers.acer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1664/~/what-is-dual-channel-memory%3F

this is why RAM is usually sold in matched sets or 2 or 4 as each channel comes from the different stick. 2400 RAM would run 1200 per channel = 2400 MHz even with 1 stick running in dual channel mode there is only 1 64 channel to run from.

With that out of the way, I'll now have to deal with Dell Business support to sort out why I'm only running 600MHz on 16 GB of 2400 GHz RAM. I seem to be learning something here. One must pay very close attention to every detail when ordering a computer from Dell. this is the first time in my 20 years with notebooks that I've had an issue with RAM. Asus was doing the same kind of thing sort of with SSD but selling notebook with 512Gb M.2 NVME SSD, the owners got them then found out that they were actually getting 2 x 256 GB M.2 NVME SSD In RAID 0 mode. no big deal Ha, your **bleep** for upgrading  and stuck with at least 1 256 GB M.2

I installed HWiNFO but am now even more confused. Can someone decipher this for me? What speed is the memory actually running at? THANKS!

Your image did not make it, this is what mine looks like, bottom right corner show I have 16 GB Clock speed 665 This section is currently the box above is empty Hwinfo is unable to read my RAM You should see the brand name of your Ram and model number all your timings and finally the voltage of the RAM. When you add the 2nd Stick in it should read exactly the same at least for the timings and voltage. Sorry I'm not much help since Hwinfo is not really reading my RAM. I spoke with tech support and found out that on this notebook my ram is soldered in and is not upgradeable or removable. My other notebook is at my office, I'll post a picture of the  Hwinfor64 info from it, that will make more sense to you. in the morning.

@Clintlgm  and @cpeggo 

What do you think???

Two exactly the same DDR3 - 12800 (1600)

One DDR3 - 12800 (1600)

What do you think???

Regards,

U2

I was happy to find 1 16gb stick in my laptop.  I bought a second and now I have 32gb for only an extra $60.  My laptop is noticeably faster for what I do (Game Development, most of my time is in Visual Studio and Unity).

Next, I'll replace the SSD, the random reads/writes are not great.  But it is less noticeable with a larger read/write memory cache.

I am glad Dell doesn't solder their parts in or make it difficult to replace things.  I quite like this laptop.

Yes U2 that appear correct 800 per channel 1600 in dual channel mode.

It appears on this Inspiron 13 7386. I do have 2 8GB sticks the problem for me is that Hwinfo64 nor cupid can read them. I was about to pull this apart When I check in with support and they explain that the RAM on this model they are soldered on to the motherboard

Glad to hear you got it all sorted out. I really like Samsung SSD M.2 and SATA ones are all the best and fastest available. I do not use Magician or rapid mode although in your case it might work out. What  Rapid Mode is a RAM Disk it works great with small Transfers, on large volume transfers its really no help.

Hi Clint - I'm not sure if the forum notifies you of new responses to old topics so I hope you see this. I have a 7786 17inch and it will not accept a 2.5" SSD. 

The manual states that it accepts:

One 2.5-inch hard drive SATA AHCI 6 Gbps Up to 2 TB

and

M.2 2280/2230 solid-state drive PCIe NVMe up to 32 Gbps Up to 512 GB

Mine has the factory 256GB M2 NVMe and I wanted to add a 1TB SSD to the SATA slot. However, it will not work. I sent it back to Dell thinking it was a BIOS issue because it wouldn't even allow it to boot and after 15 days all they did was re-install the OS. 

I just wasted about an hour talking to Dell support about this and they are claiming that the SATA port only accepts mechanical HDDs, not an SSD.

So, your signature says you have a 512GB SSD. Is that still true? I guess that means you can confirm that it accepts a 512 but it seems to not accept a 1TB. 

Thanks!

There is no difference between a 2.5 hard drive and a 2.5 SSD they are exactly the same physical size and a SATA 3 connection. If you couldn't get it to boot you should have cloned from your current OS SSD to the new one. most likely your system is running on RAID driver so if you want to clean install you'll need to install the IRST driver first

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln297920/reset-or-reinstall-windows-10-on-your-dell-computer?lang=en

you say you have m.2 2280 slot NVME that should work with up to 2 TB for sure 1 TB  your model just hasn't been tested with any larger SSD,  you may only have 2 lanes open the newer m.2 SSD are 4 lane is this is true you'll only get half speed. Look in your Service manual you may have a 256GB 2230 card and if that is the case you'll need the 2280 adapter. on mine the bracket just turned around and mounted for the 2280 card. My 512gb is a 2230 card my system has both a 2280 and 2230 slot so I just moved it to the 2230 slot and installed my 1 TB Samsung 970 Evo and cloned the 512 to the 1TB  then formated the 512GB 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LClr3FPg4_4

@Clintlgm(or anybody else): I just want to clarify what you just said as there's a lot of different info in this thread and I don't want to buy a bunch of stuff that may not work.

Regarding RAM, M.2, SATA SSD, and NVMe, the manual lists the following capacities:

* RAM: 2x DDR4 slots, 16 GB each

* SATA: One 2.5-inch hard drive | SATA AHCI | 6 Gbps | Up to 2 TB

* NVMe: M.2 2280/2230 solid-state drive | PCIe NVMe | up to 32 Gbps | Up to 512 GB

Which of these are actually the maximum capacities? (It sounds like you are saying the NVMe capacity is not really limited to 512 GB. Can you confirm that? And are the other capacities true?)

1.  Your analysis is correct - you can have either an Optane module or an NVMe drive -- not both.

2.  Though Dell says 512G, Crucial is willing to back its recommendation with a money-back guarantee, so 2G will work just fine.  More might as well, subject to space availability;  most drives over 2G are double-sided and may not fit correctly.

What you seeing in your manual is all that was tested at printing time. 2.5 SATA SSD are limited to 4TB this is determined by what will fit. Samsung has 4TB SATA 2.5 SSD at 7mm thick your maximum thickness is 9mm.

M.2 NVME PCIe 4x 2280 max is 2TB The only limitation should be what will fit. 128 through 2TB all have the same dimensions At least Samsung I don't have any experience with other brands.

2X16 +32 that's a lot of RAM for a notebook This could be controlled by your BIOS or CPU or both.

If I'm mistaken with any of this please correct my errors, anyone