The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    M14x and 16 Gb of RAM . . . ;)

    Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by plice, Oct 24, 2012.

  1. plice

    plice Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi,

    I had 4 Gb stock from Dell, but I needed much more horsepower. I've look around forums and ppl have been lucky with cosair 16Gb one, so... I went and bought 2 x 8 Gb 1600 Mhz ones and obviously I got blue screens crashing win 7 . . .

    Is there a way to tune down the ram that i can try?? I'm gonna run memtest 86 in a sec and check the dump files as well, but i'm pretty sure it's the ram

    The thing is i'm running software that does lots of calcs and the bugger takes ~ 10Gb of RAM to solve the data. It does solve it (before I see the blue screen of death. . . ) so i really would like to stay with 16 Gb instead of buying another 8.

    I know the board 'legally' supports 8gs only.

    Any good ideas?

    thank you.
     
    plice, Oct 24, 2012
    #1
  2. homank76

    homank76 Alienware/Dell Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    601
    Messages:
    1,137
    Likes Received:
    62
    Trophy Points:
    66
    What OS are your running? Need to make sure that it can handle it first.
     
    homank76, Oct 24, 2012
    #2
  3. plice

    plice Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    hi,
    win 7 pro
    i7 2760 qm 2.40 ghz

    the chip is cms8gx3m1a1600c10. x2
    im running memtest 86 now and its failing. im overclocking it now. at 1330 its more stable but still fails memtests. i have tried xmp profiles but its still failing :(
    another interesting thing is that bios goes back to default on ram overclocking after saving bios settings,pretty strange but memtest see the changes.
     
    plice, Oct 24, 2012
    #3
  4. rquinn19

    rquinn19 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    182
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    rma them..first thing to do even before booting into os is run memtest at stock levels. if it cant do it then return them. not uncommon for ram to be DOA. Probably just on of the sticks but just exchange it and save yourself the headache.
     
    rquinn19, Oct 24, 2012
    #4
  5. Colpolite

    Colpolite Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    990
    Likes Received:
    11
    Trophy Points:
    31
    I wonder what kind of programs or user are you to need 16gb of ram lol. This is probably for bragging rights to say you have 16gb ram right?
     
    Colpolite, Oct 24, 2012
    #5
  6. plice

    plice Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    to correct myself, this is r1 not r2, r1 does not officially support 16 gb....
    finite element calculatins, creating mesh over object ate my 1 gb of ram left, but it worked with 13 gb ;)
    im testing each chip by itself with memtest,hope it fails!!!!
    edit: one chip failed, 2nd chip is stable :) i will have to replace. it tomorrow.
    thnx guys!

    Edit: both 8Gb chips work well, no errors present. I can confirm that M14x R1 can cope with 16Gb :)
     
    plice, Oct 24, 2012
    #6
  7. Cees007

    Cees007 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Cees007, Dec 7, 2012
    #7
  8. copper7op

    copper7op Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    120
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    31
    To correct everyone, the M14 R1 DOES officially support 16GB ram. About 5 months before it was pulled from the Dell website, the R1 was available for purchase with 16GB.

    So yes, you should work fine, but never run MemTestX86 on OC'd ram. Run everything at stock speeds to get a stable test. You should get failures, and make sure you're testing 1 stick at a time. Don't run memtest with 2 sticks in, you'll never figure out which is the bad stick :D
     
    copper7op, Dec 10, 2012
    #8