Does Dell Latitude E6420 Supports Over 8GB of RAM in Practice?

Appu, I have two 4GB modules, and my system recognizes 8 GB installed, but says I only have 3.16 available.  Is there a setting I need to change to increase what memory is available?

Thanks

How many bits is your operating system? Must be 32-bit because there is less than 4GB RAM limit.

Yes, you have to upgrade to a 64-bit version of the OS. 

The Dell SupportAssist app shows that I have 8.00 GB installed of 16.00 GB supported on the System Summary

Running Latitude E6420  Windows 7 Enterprise 64-Bit SP1

Hi,

For anyone interested:

My system did not recognize the two 8Gb Kingston memory modules. When powering up, no image, but HDD and Wireless LEDs powered on + Battery LED blinking.

According to this post en.community.dell.com/.../19496714, that means the memory modules are detected but an error was encountered upon booting up.

Checking the BIOS version, I saw I was on revision A14. Dell replaced my motherboard with a refurbished one and apparently they don't care too much about BIOS revisions ;)

I upgraded the BIOS to revision A21 and voilà! Both memory modules are recognized and I now have 16Gb RAM ^^

In summary:

E6420, BIOS A21

Intel® Core™ i7-2640M CPU @ 2.80GHz × 4

15.6 GiB

PC3-10600 - DDR3 1333 MHz

KINGSTON FOR DELL SO-DIMM 8 GO DDR3 1333 MHZ CL9 

No issues since install about 2h ago

BTW, http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/dmidecode 

# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.6 present.

Handle 0x0041, DMI type 16, 15 bytes
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: None
Maximum Capacity: 16 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 2

Hi Boris_Yo,

If everything works as expected, I wouldn't touch it...

I upgraded because my extra 8Gb of RAM was not working. It does now :-)

Best

Did you have problems with Intel Turbo Boost working? My configuration is different and I have problem with it because it works after first boot. After restart it does not although always being activated in BIOS so I have to shut-down and turn on again for it to work but in first boot. When it works,  some moments feel sluggish, like low FPS you can see in graphics-intensive video video games. The only way I found to prevent sluggishness is by dragging window in Windows but then sluggishness returns. Weird and BIOS updates that I tried up to A19 did not solve the issue...

I just tried installing 16GB ram in my Dell Latitude E6420 with an I5 processor.  It worked.  Note I had to use msconfig -> boot -> Advanced Options and simply click on the checkbox by usable ram and click it again.  The system had 8GB saved and so needed that refreshed.  Before doing that you will see 8 usable 16 installed.  

The laptop is screaming now.. from 4 to 16 :)

Does yours have SSD or original HDD that came with it?

I am on 8GB and it was slow until I installed SDD. That's when things really took off.

It has SSD, and I noticed the affect of the ram right away.  Originally only 8 was seated correctly and I noticed a marked increase in performance.  After I ensured both sticks were in appropriately and updated the max memory in msconfig it runs amazingly quick now with 16GB.

I have an important update.  Originally it appeared to work seamlessly on my Dell Latitude E6420 Intel Core i5 2520M laptop to install 16GB of compatible ram.  The ram tests successfully using memtest86 and all seems fine.  However, there are infrequent BSODs that I am finding.  They appear to not happen if the usable ram is set to a lower value.  I have it set to 8GB and it appears to be running well.  I am going to step up a couple GB at a time and respond with what is stable for this computer.

I had a similar problem with another machine (not DELL), and it turns out that a RAM module (1 of 2) was faulty, because after changing it with another module the laptop didn't show that problem anymore. I did not run any test on the faulty module, just changed it. Hope this helps.

Interesting the machine works faultlessly if I gimp it to 12 GB RAM through msconfig.  That would be great if I could get all 16 to work.  Have you heard of ram sticks being faulty in that they would cause errors only after a certain amount of ram?  Since it is 16 gigs.  that means 4 of the second stick is being used too and it works without error.

Is that to say that somewhere in the second 8GB, there is a hardware defect? I would think a memory testing software would be able to detect the defective 4GB region that is causing problems. Have you tried to replace the entire 8GB with another memory stick?