Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

All of us like brands for some features and dell in my opinion one of the best choices for aftermarket upgrades.

Dont need to sell configs with 32GB, just need a possibility to add it manual.
A lot of people buying base configs and bring their SSD /RAM from older ones....(but this peoples will still buy dell

 

I just don't understand what the downside of "enabling" 32GB of RAM would be. Who cares if only 2 people in the entire world would use it or not? Who cares how expensive 16GB sticks of RAM will be when they are made widely available? Who cares why someone would/would not need 32GB of RAM? If this is something fairly safe and simple to enable, then why not enable it? If I want to spend $1,000.00 on 16GB sticks of RAM, then as a consumer, that's my business.

The only way I could see NOT enabling 32GB of RAM is if it would cost a ton of money to do, or if it posed a significant danger to the PC in some way, shape, or form. Other than that, if it's as simple as changing a line or two of code, then why NOT do it? If someone uses it, great, if not, then at least that option is available if/when they do choose to use it.

 

Specially if it is for a machine that's advertised as a workstation for the professional market. I work with a lot of video editing and post effects so the more RAM I have the better. If I had the possibility of upgrading to 32Gb I would do it without a blink.

 

My M3800 had various dark spots, and they were increasing in number. I had the screen replaced under warranty. The new screen is now starting to produce these dark spots as well. Looks like some sort of defect in the underlying panel. I treat my M3800 nicely, so it's not from any abuse. Given that I've had this happen on 2 screens now, very surprised to not find much about it online. Anyone else getting this?

I'm in the UK; wondering if it's something about the screens here and not elsewhere perhaps?

 

It's all about opportunity cost. I think you and I both know it's likely to be more than changing one line of code. Even if it's only one hour of work for an engineer somewhere at Dell to modify the BIOS, that then needs to be tested (i.e. Dell has to buy some of these expensive DIMMs they don't stock or offer for resale in order to test and validate). And all of this will take time and energy that could be directed elsewhere (i.e. engineering/designing/testing the M6900 or the M3900).

So while you're correct it doesn't cost that much cash to tweak the BIOS and test it in order to please the two potential users, the benefit of focusing on the larger pool of M3900/M6900 users outweighs it handily.

 

Possibly, but I disagree. If it takes an hours worth of work and buying a few sticks of nonreturnable RAM to allow 32GB of RAM on the M3800, then I simply do not see that as being a big deal for a corporation like Dell. For me it would take a whole lot more than that (or possible system damage issues) in order for me to understand why Dell wouldn't do something like this.

I am sure the engineers could pretty much tell you (without much testing being needed) if enabling 32GB of RAM would pose significant risks, and what those risks would possibly be. I really don't think this is as hard people may think it is, as similar things have been done on other machines before with no side effects whatsoever.

 

Check the event viewer for messages indicating the computer was put to sleep. This link might help.

 

I don't necessarily disagree. But there might be other considerations.

1) Heat. What if more RAM causes more heat than the they think the laptop might be ready for. Sure, it might be OK, but they have to test that or else they're flooded with complaints. I seem to remember that one of the causes of them stopping production of the downright magnificently beautiful RGBLED displays on the original V1 of the Studio XPS 16 was simply heat related (though I myself never had a problem with heat).

2) Chipset timing issues. Sure we think that all chipsets are created alike but even they have revisions (same chipset, but v1, v2, v3 etc). And older chipsets are cheaper for Dell to buy than the newest ones out of the assembly block from Intel. Heck, this is why some of us diehards pay attention to Router serial # versions. "Same" hardware, different under-the-hood "revisions" of the actual hardware chips. Electrical timing issues between CPU / RAM / Chipset are very important.

3) For all we know the motherboard doesn't have the actual physical pipes (printed) to address that much RAM... or they are unused and don't lead to the chipset. I mean, there is a reason why the MAX config of a MacBook Pro is 16GB also. Hmm? Why is that? Plenty of animators and music producers use MacBooks too.

Listen, I'm all for more RAM. But lots of music producers and animators get by on Macbooks Pro's which are also limited to 16GB... non upgradeable! And before you say that OS X is optimized yada yada, I will point you to the fact that although we may hate Windows 8's UI (I do- I can't stand it), it runs beautifully on 2GB of RAM(!). Nobody gives MS credit for that. Windows 8 is actually pretty amazing in footprint and way more optimized than OS X... by several orders of magnitude.

In short. I think that if you need that much RAM then you are better off getting a 4 slot machine. It'll save you money on DIMM prices too.

 

My one suggestion to Dell: Drop Synaptics (or Alps) and bring your input R&D in-house. It is literally the only thing that is keeping your machines back.

 

It is what it is. Not about to get into a huge battle about this. You are making a lot of assumptions about what I MAY say/how I MAY think/what my needs are, and they are mostly way off-base. I never said testing would not be required, but again I will say that all of the things that you stated as potential issues YOU'RE not sure about, but the Engineers at Dell should easily be able to tell you whether or not those things would potentially cause issues or not. They should know the architecture and capabilities of the machine that they built inside and out. Simple as that.

From what I gather, none of the things you stated sound like its the reason why enabling 32 GB of RAM hasn't been done. In fact it sounds like the Dell Engineers have already said that enabling 32 GB of RAM on the M3800 is something they are willing to do IF they get enough clamoring for it. That leads me to believe that it's just not as complicated/dangerous/time-consuming as people are making it out to be.

As I said, it is what it is, I don't NEED 32 GB of RAM, but if my machine is capable of using that much RAM, I would love to at least have that option available to me.