Inspiron 15R SE 7520 Ram Upgrade

Hi JIM912,

The 7520 supports a maximum of 8GB memory.

You could however, replace the HDD with SSD.

Compatible SSD's for your system model from Crucial - http://bit.ly/2k7qZLF

Also, please click my DELL-username and write me a private conversation with the service tag and your contact details(Name and Email) for case records.

Let us know if you have any other queries.

Hi Jim912,

Officially on the record, the 7520 might only support 8GB of memory, but in reality, it can support 16GB, too.  I had a 7520 for a little over 3 years, and went through multiple BIOS upgrades with it.  All the while the 16GB (2x8GB) I used with it worked perfectly fine.  For the record, I used the following DDR3 SO-DIMMs, but probably many others would work, too.

www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx

Regarding replacing the hard drive, yes, it is no problem whatsoever (my 7520 had multiple hard drive upgrades).  As DELL-Rishi has indicated, you might consider an upgrade to an SSD--it makes a HUGE difference especially if used for the system drive.

Since larger capacity laptop hard drives (like 2TB) are still significantly cheaper than equivalent capacity SSDs, there is an interesting solution for the 7520 (and many other machines, too).  If you don't use the optical drive, you can get a replacement drive caddy that will fit a 2.5" laptop form factor drive into the optical bay slot.  Of course, you still have the regular drive bay, too.  In fact, that was the last configuration I had for my 7520 before it failed.  I had a 500GB SSD in a drive caddy in the optical drive bay, and used that as the boot/system drive.  And then in the regular drive bay, I had a 2TB regular drive for storage.  It was wonderful and blazingly fast--it breathed a whole new life into the machine.  Indeed, I would still be using it today if the motherboard had not developed a short several months later.

Note that if you do want to consider replacing the optical drive with a drive caddy for a 2.5" drive, you should be careful of the size you order.  These caddies come in slightly different heights that essentially look identical in online pictures, but that will be obviously wrong when you try to fit it.  In the case of the 7520, it needs a 12.7mm high caddy.  I ordered the following for <$4, and it worked wonderfully.

www.aliexpress.com/.../32226079536.html

Good luck with your 7520, and here's to hoping you don't develop an infamous mobo short like so many others!  If you have any further questions, just PM me.  Wait, can we actually PM on this board?