Dell XPS 17 (L701X) not living up to Specifications

Hi I purchased a Dell XPS 17 (L701X) laptop almost exactly a year ago and now I find a big stumbling block with upgrading the RAM.

When I purchased the machine I made extra special attention to the RAM. That is had an Upgrade path to 16GB or better. Even though Dell's own Support Center software reports that the motherboard can support 16 GB Ram. In reality Dell does NOT support it.

It seems that not long after purchasing this unit Dell changed there specs and the motherboard from an i5 to an i7 and the Ram went from 8GB 2 slot to 16 GB 4 slot board.

The problem I have is that I made sure I could upgrade to 16 GB Ram when I purchased the Laptop and now I am being told by Dell that it is NOT so... my board can only support 2 slots of 4GB totaling 8 GB Ram.

So far Dell's only answer has been for me to spend another $1,000.00 Plus dollars to upgrade not only the Ram but the motherboard, video card & Ram as well as the System Ram...

In my opinion Dell should offer me a new motherboard with the correct sockets and configuration that I required originally.

Anyone got any thoughts of how I can get what I ordered?

Thank
Squire Dude

 

If you have documentation, then you can go back to dell and complain. Otherwise the specs are pretty clear, if you have a core i5, its max 8 gigs, if you have the core i7, its 16gigs. Whoever you spoke with gave you bad advice.

I'd never spend $1000 to upgrade what you have now when you can get a brand new laptop for that

The other thing too is do you really need 16gigs of ram? What apps are you running that use it?

 

The XPS 17 was always like that. Stock dual core i3/i5 do not get 4 slot motherboards while quad core i7 get the 4 slot motherboard. Happens alot on big 17" DTR laptops like Precision/Elitebook/W series. Perhaps Dell's customer service read something wrong, although last gen Arrandale **theoretically** can support 8 GB DDR3 sticks as the M6500/8740W/W701 could do 32 GB with 4 DIMM, it might be a limitation of your BIOS and your CPU. And you can pick up a single 8 GB stick for like 80 bucks on Newegg..

 

You could buy 2 8GB sticks if you want 16GB of RAM

FRYS.com | Corsair

 

Not many programs do. But video editors have no predetermined limit.

 

Oh and I just game on my laptop, but I would need that amount of RAM. I always have 15+ FF tabs open, and on idle I burn 3.5 GB RAM. If I play a custom map on SC2, it can shoot up close to 8 GB. Also once I had SC2 active and TF2 open and I hit almost 13.5 GB RAM. Not difficult to hit that much RAM usage.

 

yeah, video editors love ram for sure! There are also some graphic editors (like photoshop), autocad etc and virtually all VM software will love 16 gigs. But i just wanted to make sure that the OP needed 16 gigs before getting upset or spending the cash to upgrade.

Holy Tsunade! lol The most i've ever run up to was 9 gigs (hence I upped my ram to 12 gigs just in case)

 

Coming from an XPS 17 Owner, the actual division is whether or not you got a 3D LCD and the nVidia 555m. I've got an i7 and I can't do 4 sticks of RAM. The RAM slots only have 1 slot in each riser.

 

Hi Guys and Gals,

Thanks for all the thoughts comments and suggestions. Let me try and answer as many as I can...

What Apps do I run?
I am a developer and tend to run MS SQL Server, MS Visual Studio, Paint.NET, Artisteer, MS Expressions, MS Access. with a few browser sessions going running apps. Oh and of course Outlook for email client.

Why so much RAM?
I am running 4GB RAM at the present with the i5 processor. I have a boot time of 10+ minutes and am also constantly bombarded with apps saying "Not Responding" all the time and freezing up the computer.
I do NOT play games so video performance is not much of an issue.

I have reinstalled the OS back to factory 3 times, had several pieces of hardware replaced. Ran the Diagnostics several time with no errors.

I previously had a Dell Studio and I maxed out the Ram on purchase without checking for an upgrade path. My error there and not to be made again. But here I am up the creek without a paddle and no solutions being offered by Dell.

I do not believe that when I first purchased the XPS computer that there was a choice of i5 or i7 CPU. I just know that I carefully requested an made sure that I could go as high as 16 GB if not higher. When I run Dell's own Support Center software it reports the 4GB installed and says that the Maximum Supported Size is 16 GB. If this had read 8GB when I first got the machine I would have returned it there and then.. But for the last year I have been told time and time again by Solutions Stations and Level 1 TS that I can go to 16 GB Ram. I purchased a machine with the express understanding that Dell will support it to it design and posted specifications.

Dell is not living up to it sales pitch and I demand restitution.

Thanks
Phill

 

I'm 100% sure XPS 17 was offered i7 quad cores at launch. And they quoted 16 GB RAM (4 x 4) with the i7 configuration. Unofficially I'm not sure if you can swap the i5 for i7 because non i7 machines had Optimus and Clarksfield quad core i7's don't have IGP on chip and thus do not support Optimus.

Again you can purchased 8 GB sticks of RAM, but I'm not positive the i5 can run all of it, nor your BIOS.

 

something has issues.... more memory is not going to solve these problems.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the thought on the i5 vs i7. AS far as I have been told by Dell the motherboard has to be switched out as the Video card is built in and needs to upped to 3GB.

As for the BIOS or any other limitations Dell did not inform me of any. On one call to TS they told me to go to Fry's or Best Buy and have them install the 2x8GB Ram ships as they will work.

Thanks

 

Im thinking something in the storage sub-system has issues. Do you have an SSD in the XPS? If so, is it a SandForce based drive? Those are known to have some pretty gnarly issues with XPS 17s and stock Intel/Microsoft SATA Drivers.

 

Not sure?? How can I find out what an SSD is? And whether I have one?
According to Dell Support Center the built in HDD is a WDC WD5000BEKT-75KA9TO ATA Device Capacity 451.07GB/Free Space 313.00GB NTFS... does that help???

 

Exactly. That's not a too little RAM issue.

 

I think it might be a bad sector or a failing hard drive. That's the only plausible reason why boot time would take 10+ minutes with your configuration.

 

Yeah it does. Means you don't have an SSD. I agree with one of the previous posters, hard drive is failing. Call Dell up.

 

so has anyone with an first gen i5 been able to do 16gb of ram. I'm also would like 16gb of ram for editing but my i5 520m might not support it. Wondering if upgrading my CPU to an i7 740qm will let me use 16gb of ram.

 

Hi all,

I am also a proud owner of one of these beasts the Dell XPS 17. Heres my spec:

Dell XPS 17 L701X:

CPU: Quad Core Intel I7 740QM 1.73Ghz Turbo Boost capable upto 2.9 GHz
MEMORY: 16GB 1.333GHZ MAX upgradeable to 32GB Unbranded DDR 3 (4 slots)
GPU: GeForce Nvidia GT 445M 3GB with NVIDIA Physics X
Primary: SSD: OCZ Vertex Plus 2.5" 240GB SATA II 3GB/s
Optical drive: Bluray BDROM Player + CDRW/DVD RAM writer (Single Drive)
Secondary: HDD: samsung 640GB HDD 7200 RPM SATA ll
SCREEN: 17" WLED HD 1600x900
Bluetooth 3.0
Wireless N
USB 3.0 + USB 2.0
E-sata Compatible
HDMI + Display Port
Multi Memory Card Reader



EXTRAS: Analog/DVB-T Digital Television system, Mobile BROADBAND HSPA 3G (with sim card slot under the battery).

And all the standard XPS 17 features and thats about it actually, maxed out i guess well i guess i could replace the Secondary HDD the Samsung 640GB one for another SSD Solid State Drive and also i could upgrade the spare 2 X empty RAM slots with another 8GB each totalling to 32GB RAM which isnt officially supported but as you already probably know from others on this forum it seems to work out well.

My ideal XPS system would be as follows:

CPU: The latest Core i7 processor with max speed of 3.4 GHz
MEMORY: 32GB 1600 MHz DDR3
GPU: The latest Graphics Adapter e.g GT555M 3GB DDR5
Primary: SSD: 1T Terabyte SATA III 6GB/s
Secondary: SSD: 1T Terabyte SATA III 6GB/s
Optical drive: Bluray Writer
SCREEN: Highest resolution a 17" FULL 1080p HD FULL 3D TOUCH screen
Bluetooth 4.0
Wireless N
USB 3.0 + USB 2.0
E-sata Compatible
HDMI + Display Port
Multi Memory Card Reader
Analog/DVB-T Digital Television
Mobile Brodband with 4G compatible card
Backlit Keyboard


NOTE: My Windows 7 x64 Experience index score is 6.8 and the max is 7.2. My system takes 5 seconds to boot to windows login page from power on and from there 1 seconds to display windows desktop. Core i7 will support 32 GB ram but does your motherboard have 4 slots? If only two then max is 16GB with core i7 and 8GB with core i5. I play all the latest games smoothly such as Battlefield 3, MW3, starcraft II etc etc.

NOTE: in order for 32GB ram support make sure the BIOS is updated to the latest version which is currently A10 and you have 4 SODIMM slots available and a core i7 CPU..