Dell's RAM

If I were to upgrade my RAM to 4GB. Am I going to void my warranty? Besides, which brand of RAM is in my laptop now? Was it Kingston?

Regards.

 

I believe the contract states that if you open up your laptop to work on it yourself, you void the warranty.

 

Its a pain on that laptop though, check my sig for pictures...

It wont void your warranty though.

 

Upgrading your RAM does not void your warranty.

 

Anything you do to your laptop that they cannot tell you did will not void your warranty!

For example, upgrading your ram requires just removing a few screws, taking out ram, and replacing it. Even if they said this does void your warranty, if something goes wrong, you would just need to put the original RAM back in before getting warranty work done and they would never know.

But, they allow you to upgrade the RAM....but obviously they won't cover your new ram if it breaks down...heh.

 

Memory is a CRU = Customer Replaceable Unit
See M1530 Owner's Manual page 140-143

Other CRUs for this model are:
Hard Drives (SATA and SSD)
Mini Cards (WLAN, WWAN, Flash Cache)
Dell Travel Remote
Modem (External)
AC Adapter
Battery

Everything else is FRU (Field Replaceable Unit)
to be installed by Dell Certified Technician

If you don't use Dell parts, they are obviously
not covered by warranty, as explained in the
owners manual.

 

Dell has some random unnamed brand of memory that they use; it's also over priced.

Also, be sure to ground yourself before you handle your memory, you don't want to fry your shiny new memory stick with static electricity now do you?

Other than that, if you've had much experience sticking two things together, you'll be fine. You played with legos, right?

 

You probably have Hynix or Samsung RAM. Dell overcharges for RAM (if they charged what newegg did, then they couldn't offer the 16% off EPP discount and/or a coupon and a make-you-happy-to-not-return-it incentive, etc.)

If you damage the mother-board, you technically cannot hold Dell responsible for that, but if you successfully install it, I don't think that you've violated the terms of the warranty.

4 GB should cost around $60 these days, possibly with a rebate. Crucial is the best, IMHO, though there certainly are others to choose from; I've never had trouble with Kingston, BTW.

 

Thanks to all of you for the prompt replies.

I'm thinking of upgrade my RAM to 2 piece of Corsair 2GB RAM. I played Lego but I don't know how to do the whole screwing thingy. Lol. I have a friend who is good in these stuffs to take care of it. Just worried about my 3 years complete cover warranty, I don't wanna ruin that.

Another question, can you all recommend me which kind of RAM should I choose to upgrade so it can work well or compatible with my processor? Is 2GB DDR2 RAM 800Mhz available yet?

 

Yes it is, but it doesn't serve a purpose at the moment.

Your system will clock it down to 667Mhz.

 

No reason to run 4GB is the first place. And no your warranty will not be void no matter what brand is in the notebook.

 

But even if it clocks it down, wouldn't the lower latency that the 800mhz part offers at the lower speed offer a slight, perhaps maybe even measurable, performance increase? I am not sure how Dell laptops BIOS handles RAM timings, but just about every mobo I have dealt with as a tech and system builder has automatically adjusted timings according to the RAM installed and its capabilities.

 

In a 32-bit OS you will still have between 3-3.5 GB available, and you can never have too much RAM. I say you are wrong

As far as warranty goes...you won't void the warranty on the notebook itself, but Dell will no longer warranty the RAM (it isn't theirs).

You are right. Normally 800Mhz RAM is rated at 5-5-5 timings and when clocked down to 667Mhz will run at 4-4-4.

The only stipulation is, since this is programmed into the SPD, you have to rely on that being programmed that way. Since we can't change RAM timings ourselves via the BIOS, we are at the mercy of the SPD as that is what the computer is going to run. It is very possible that you put in a stick that has an SPD table of 5-5-5 at both 667 and 800mhz.

I buy 800Mhz RAM for one reason really: it has an almost 100% chance of working since it is binned as working at the higher speed, and not "barely" making the 667mhz cut.

 

why would that be? if your laptop's FSB is 800mhz and both ram pieces are 800mhz, why would it be turned down to 667mhz?

 

So I'll just go for the 667mhz one will do as 800mhz doesn't work on my processor optimumly. Am I right? Besides, I need to search for a window patch before I can upgrade to 4GB of RAM. This is what I've look in Corsair's website.

 

For many years now CPU and RAM bus frequencies have been able to run Asynchronously. If not for this then people would not be able to get some of the crazy CPU overclocking results they do on their desktops. The Santa Rosa chipset setup in most current Laptops has a default RAM bus speed of 667mhz, regardless of the CPUs FSB. Changing the RAM to a higher rated speed does not overcome the laptop chipset's hardware limitation or restrictions, it just means that the RAM you installed is rated to perform at a higher speed and as mentioned before should be that much more stable at the lower clocking.