Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Has anyone changed their RAM? Any comments on a good RAM manufacturer type or brand? I'd actually like to upgrade but to be honest, not sure what people find would be ideal for heavy computational and graphics work. Any comments or thoughts or opinions? Corsair vengeance? etc etc?

 

I doubt that anyone tried that yet. Since most are buying this laptop for its QHD+ screen and all QHD+ configurations come maxed out at 16 GB, there is really no need to upgrade.

 

Differences in RAM performance will be so minimal that it's not really worth the effort. If Dell gave you RAM with a speed rating far below what the chipset supported (they don't) or allowed you to overclock your RAM and therefore made it worthwhile to buy RAM that supported crazy overclocks (they don't, so it isn't), then it might be worth it. But it's not, so if you're going to get a RAM upgrade your concerns should only be whether it will work with whatever RAM you've already got installed if you're keeping any existing DIMMs, or if not then how stable that RAM tends to be in systems. When adding RAM, theoretically DIMMs should interoperate across vendors, but sometimes different model DIMMs from the same vendor don't even work together. Whenever I can't get truly matched pairs, I always try to match the speed rating, CAS latency numbers, per-module capacity, and most importantly the voltage to whatever is already there.

If I'm replacing all of the existing RAM, I still try to match the voltage to whatever was removed in case there's an incompatibility on that system with higher or lower-voltage chips, and then I just do research on specific offerings from the brands that have proven to be solid in the past, which for me is Crucial, Kingston (specifically their Hyper-X chips), and usually Corsair.

 

My delivery date just got bumped a month from 12/6 to 1/6.

 

Mine has been delayed by more than two weeks...

 

Thanks excellent advice....i wonder if anyone can shed some light on whether the memory is 1.35 of 1.5V.

By the way....if you havent seen this ...from the Dell site when u click the little question mark for further info at the memory line ..it says this

1600 or 1866?

Memory for Dell Precision™ mobile workstations is available in two different speeds: 1600MHz or 1866MHz. 1600MHz memory offers good performance. 1866MHz memory runs faster and therefore can help provide a performance boost. Power users or customers who want the utmost performance should choose 1866MHz memory.

How many DIMMS?

DIMM stands for dual in-line memory module, the type of memory chip used in Dell Precision mobile workstations. To provide the utmost in configurability all Dell Precision workstations have four slots for memory DIMMs. Customers who want the best flexibility for future upgrades should populate two DIMM slots. If all four DIMM slots are populated at the time of purchase, some or all of the memory will have to be discarded to accommodate more memory.

Based on the user manual i downloaded appears as though system is configured with 1600 and there are 2 additional places for cards.

 

According to CPU-Z, my XPS 15 has Micron DIMMs that are PC3-12800 (DDR1600) and run at 1.35V. The exact part number on the DIMM is 16KTF1G64HZ-1G6E1. Micron is another great memory vendor that I forgot to mention above, but they tend to do more business with OEMs and not have as much stuff available at retail.

As for 1600 vs 1866, the i7-4702HQ chip in this system only supports up to 1600, so 1866 would at best be down-clocked to 1600 and at worst wouldn't work at all.

In terms of "2 additional places for cards", there are 2 RAM slots TOTAL, not 2 additional slots beyond the ones that are used for the RAM the system ships with.

 

My M3800 is out for delivery today after ordering on 18th Nov. It is the full spec model, shipped on the 24th, so it has taken a while to get here from manufacturing. Hoping it will be well worth the wait ; )

 

So my M3800 arrived yesterday and it´s gorgeous. I am well aware that a Windows PC needs a little more time to be se up than a Mac but something is really annoying me and I wonder if anybody also has this problem: The USB-to-LAN dongle doesn´t seem to work for me. I mean I receive some kind of signal through the wire and i can visit pages but internet connection speed test websites cannot register any down- or upstream. USB 3.0 drivers are installed and I re-installed the dongle driver but still, I should receive around 90,000 kbit/s but what I get is way below 500 kbit/s. Could anybody offer a solution? I´m running on - sad to say - Windows 8.1.
Thanks

Edit: The WLAN module is so far really really...really really bad. Connection varies from 1 Mbit/s up to 300 Mbit/s within seconds. This current post is still written on my old XPS 1645 due to that. I am actually disappointed.

Edit: Was on the phone with Dell technician. WLAN card might need a replacement. LAN card is obviously so new it has problems with routers that are older than 1 year or especially with 2 brands that are very common here in Germany: FritzBox and something else I already forgot. So thats really bad. Waiting now for him to call me again after his lunch break ;-)

 

What country, please?