Self upgrading the m15x

Hey NBR Forum,

I got my m15x 2 weeks ago nad i've ben trying to play some games on it.
And lo and behold a windows pop up keeps telling me that i dont have sufficient memory to keep playing(this hapens after like 20 mins.

So i've decieded to upgrade my ram to 3 gb, so i'm wondering what is a good ram for this laptop.

I'l be sure to call alienware tech regardinghte upgrade process itself as i dont want ot nul my warranty...


BTW. i live in Canada, and a bestbuy or future shop, or the source by circuit city would be best. but any and all are welcome coments.

 

any name-brand (OCZ, Crucial, Mushkin, Kingston, Corsair, Patriot) SO-DIMM DDR2 667mhz PC-5300 (sometimes 675mhz PC-5400, same thing) RAM will do just fine.

 

so i cant put 800 mhz ram into it? and how many pins?

 

You can but it'll downclock itself to 667mhz, so I don't think there's really any point in having 800mhz sticks.

 

Just got my m15x today. Before I even booted it up I put in 2 2gb sticks of Gskill pc5300. Works great and it only cost $61 delivered from newegg.

 

what about dual channel?

i saw this as good ones : http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10110048&catid=20361

I'll be putting 1 1gb factory installed stick in there, and 1 2gb stick, and i want them to be compatible..

 

should be ok with that - but as most can prob say (or at least in my experience) it is better to get paired sticks as they are 'balanced and tested', as it were, together.

 

If your going to use 4 gigs of RAM then install it yourself rather than buying it from alienware. They charge way way to much. NEWEGG.COM

 

They'll work fine but you'll be working in single-channel since they're not matching sticks. If you want your RAM to be running in dual channel, I suggest you buy 2 x 2GB identical RAM sticks.

Here's a segment of my m15x review that talks about dual-configuration:

A good place to start looking for RAM is here:
http://www.newegg.ca/

They normally have very good prices.

 

aright thanks.

 

BTW why was your Ram so low? I haven't play a game yet that has asked for more than 2GB of ram.

 

i have no idea, i checked and stil have more than 500mb of ram left, but the windows concole keeps telling me that i'm low, and when i checked my normal processes, tehey all take about 1gb.....????

 

alright, so i put the 2 gb of crucial ram with a stick of 1gb of factory ram in there, (initially had 2gb),

everything was working fine yesterday, and then today, when ever i close the lid, and open it again, the screen does not show, and i have to restard manually.

What seems to be the problem?

btw: this ram setup is only temp, i've ordered 4gb kit of kingston ram from newegg,(arriving nov 19 thou) so i'l have the dual channel setup with that.

 

RAM shouldn't cause such issues all of a sudden methinks... do some more testing. try full shutdowns, sleep, hibernate etc and see if you can get the system back to full operational status from each one.

 

lol I feel like i'm advertising this. sorry if this is getting cliched but:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145172

 

Remove the one gig, see if the problem persists.

 

Just wondering, if I put in 4 Gigs of RAM, will the 'extra' 1 Gb get used by the 8800M ? The 8800M does use some system memory on top of its own 512 Mb if it needs it right ? I was just wondering if it could use some of the 1Gb that Vista doesnt recognise instead of using system memory.

 

hehe how's it supposed to use the extra gig if Vista doesn't see it? the GPU doesn't have it's own OS you know

 

i know, dude i'm getting the 4gb kingston ram, may eventually go 64-bit....may

 

i was answering Mortis' question, Chutney

 

apart from www.newegg.ca, which has good prices, also check out www.ncix.com, also good prices.

 

oh my bad, i was answering shadedurza

 

getting kinda confusing in here.

 

you taking to me steve?

 

no, was talking to whizzo.

 

I know but it doesn't hurt to ask does it? I was hoping that some funky interaction with the mobo would allow the GPU to use the RAM that Vista doesn't detect since the motherboard/BIOS does recognise 4 GB right ?

 

for future reference: from my experience, computers rarely have positive funky interactions

oh, btw, the mobo will recognise all the RAM you can throw at it.

 

O RLY ?? Then why do they say a mobo has a max capacity of 4 gigs or 8 gigs ?

 

cuz you can't throw more than 8 gigs at it

except in the new dell m6400 covet w/ 16Gb, and of course desktops. but that's a whole different story anyway.