XPS

[Tiny_Tech]

Has anyone has any success in upgrading the RAM to 64 GB in their XPS 15 9520?

I contacted Kingston, and they recommended a 64 GB kit of Fury Impact RAM, CL38.  I bought it, installed it, and got the RAM incompatibility code.  I contacted Kingston again about the issue, and they wrote back saying...sorry...after further testing, we have found that the Fury Impact RAM is not compatible.  Sorry.

So, that was a fun experience.

I wonder if G Skill or Corsair are going to come out with a 64 GB RAM kit that is compatible.

I see in the XPS manual that the laptop RAM at 64GB tops out at 4800 MHz.  I wonder, though, are CL numbers 38 and below supported?

It´s still pretty early in the DDR5 game....

Tiny Tech

[ejn63 · Accepted solution]

If you'd rather not wait for compatible RAM, Crucial has it now.

https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/dell/xps-15-(9520)

[Tiny_Tech]

An excellent answer from you, as always!  Thank you!

[TrentDev]

I bought Corsair 2x32 GB DD5 4800MHz for XPS 15 9520. Did not boot. Returning now for Crucial.

[Tiny_Tech]

I ended up getting this and it worked out just fine:

Crucial RAM 64GB Kit (2x32GB) DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Laptop Memory CT2K32G48C40S5

CT = Crucial Technologies

2K = 2-stick kit

32G = 32 GB RAM / stick

48 = 4800 MHz

C40 = CAS Latency = 40

S = SODIMM

5 = DDR 5

I tried to get it directly through Crucial´s website as they offered a discount, but I couldn´t ever find it in stock.  Ultimately bought it through Amazon.

Hope this helps.

Tiny_Tech

[FenixM83]

Did the RAM compromise boot time because for me it's slowed down reboots and takes a good while

[Tiny_Tech]

That´s a good question.  I bought my Dell 15 9520 back in August, I think, and I immediately did upgrades.

I installed two Kingston 2TB NVMe - Fury Renegade, did the 64 GB Crucial RAM upgrade, and then did a clean install of Windows 11 Pro.

I remember being quite disappointed at and unimpressed by my boot / restart times.  I installed my Intel RST drivers correctly, and even made sure that RAID was enabled in my BIOS.

When I first got this XPS, I did not time the length of time it takes to boot to the desktop tones, nor did I time the length of time it took to restart - go from desktop back to desktop tones.  I sure wish I would have. I am curious, but at this point, not curious enough to open up my laptop, put in all the stock hardware, play with Windows, etc.

I can tell you what my situation is now, and we can compare notes on that, however:

Lid open, computer off......pressing power button: 22 seconds til desktop tones

Restart - desktop to desktop tones: 42 seconds.

Running Windows 11 Pro Version 22H2 OS Build 22621.900, 64 GB Crucial RAM DDR5 4800 CL40, 2xNVME 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade 7300 read / 7000 write, Intel i9 CPU.

As I said, definitely not impressed with boot / restart times.

Love the laptop, though.  Feel of quality compared to my Inspiron 7400.  And the OLED screen - touch screen - 3.5K is amazing.

[Tiny_Tech]

Well, in all fairness, I decided to time my boot / restart times on my Inspiron 7400, with an 11th gen i7, 16 GB ram, and a Gen 3 Samsung NVMe..... and guess what?  Boot and restart times are about the same as my 12th i9 XPS, sometimes a hair faster, sometimes a little slower.  Averages out about the same.

Boot 21 seconds.

Restart 42 seconds (once it took 38 seconds)

I guess you can only make those two actions happen so fast huh?

Now I´m interested in seeing what FenixM83´s boot / restart times are....

[FenixM83]

So I realized that this laptop is amazing but very picky with its RAM and NVME. The ssd stated in this post actually gives a hardware error when you do a bios diagnosis. I checked on the crucial website and bought the recommended one which is more expensive but higher in speed. Will test that out but annoyingly will have to close the existing drive to it which can cause all sorts of problems so fingers crossed there will be no hardware errors and that should resolve the boot time errors. And it seems like we all have similar problems. I assumed it was the RAM but checking on the crucial website it's the exact one stated and plus if it was the RAM then there would be a lot more issues including BSOD. I am tempted to test out my firecuda nvme which is 7000mb/s but will need to see if that's compatible as well so don't want to be wasting a lot of time back and forth. 

[FenixM83]

Found the problem. This laptop comes with a Gen4 NVME and the one stated above is Gen3 hence the delays. If you do a BIOS diagnostic on the ssd mentioned above you will get an error. Will test out the Gen4 drive and will hopefully sort this issue out.