Dell Vostro 1500 Adding Ram

Hello, I've decided to add more RAM to my laptop. I have a Vostro 1500 and it's already 2GB but i want a 4GB. My question is that if I have a 1 2gb in the slot or 2 1gb RAM in the slots. I don't want to open up and laptop and possibly screw something up. Also what type of ram do i need? DDR2? PC-XXXX???

Thank you.

 

If you notebook was shipped with 2 GB it is almost certainly 2 1Gb sticks but you can run the memory scanner on www.crucial.com and find out to be sure. You would want to purchase ddr2 pc2-5300 or pc2-6400, the 6400 will downclock to 667 mhz in your laptop.

This RAM would be a great option

 

Thank you. I am not sure if Newegg delivers to Canada, i was thinking of purchasing the ram at a local store like Canadacomputers or Tigerdirect. These are the ones that I have looked into and interested in purchasing. It's DDR2-PC26400 so i think it's the right ones correct? I've always had the impression that OCZ was more of a gaming product. Last question is that, if I buy it and install it in the laptop, is there anything else that needs to be done? Or just install in the laptop and use the laptop like normal?

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=015372&cid=RAM.187.844

 

That memory should be fine, OCZ makes very good products.

www.newegg.ca for Canadian customers

Follow the Vostro 1500 Service Manual for how to install it. Make sure you power down and take out the battery. Once its installed thats all you gotta do.

 

I'm looking on crucial.com and it's saying that i can use DDR2 PC2-5300 and DDR2 PC2-6400, correct me if i'm wrong. Then when i look at stores they say DDR2 667 PC2-5300 and DDR2 800 PC2-6400. What is the difference with the 667 and 800? Which is better? or are they just the same? And what does the 5300 and 6400 mean? just models? or something more specific and important?

 

667 and 800 is the memory speed in mhz your laptop will only run at 667, so if you by 800 it will downclock to 667...either is fine for you

 

The PC5300 and PC6400 refer to the maximum theoretical bandwidth offered by the 667MHz and 800MHz memory, respectively. While the difference is nominally large, the performance difference in real-world usage is very small. As mentioned, it's even less relevant here, as PC6400 will only run at PC5300 speeds in your laptop.

 

Thank you. You guys have been of great help. I'll be purchasing the 2x2gb OCZ DDR2 800 PC2-6400 soon.

Thanks again

 

While Dell has offered 3 gb in their Laptops, they give up the dual page memory feature that may or may not be available for your Laptop. Hard to tell using Dell's paperwork support. Additionally, the upgrade paths for Dell's Laptop is only recorded through sites such as this. Dell has little interest in stretching the life of a Laptop for the buyer..

The Dell Owners Manual does a poor job of specs and explaining options available for performance.

Buying two sticks of PC2-6400 can be cheaper, as it is the volume sourced memory currently. Additionally, it could be moved to upgrade a future laptop some day, where the slower memory might not be compatible.

It's an easy install and quite cheap currently. Good luck with it.

 

I just bought the 2gbx2 OCZ DDR2 800 PC-6400. I installed it. Was fairly easy except for the ram chip under the keyboard. Was very scared of snapping something. Now it took a while to boot up my system i guess because it detected a change in memory. I got the menu asking if i changed the memory i hit F1. Now i'm on windows, things load up faster, mind you I was using 2gb memory before on Vista, was brutal. Now i'm looking under dxdiag to make sure i have the 4gb in memory but it's showing up as 3582 instead of 1024x4=4096. Is this normal? Or if i'm wrong, please correct me.

Thank you.