New member with memory upgrade questions

Hi. Glad I found this site although I should have found it before I spent the money. Anyway, I have a question on memory upgrades. My wife has an Inspiron 1501 in it's most basic configuration. We purchased no upgrades when we bought it in July '07. I just ordered a 1520 configured as listed below. I ordered it with only one GB of RAM because it was much cheaper going that route and doing an aftermarket upgrade. I ordered a 4GB RAM upgrade from Crucial and I am pretty sure that I can put the two 512MB chips that will arrive with the 1520 into the 1501, therefore doubling it's RAM. Can anyone confirm this? I believe that the 1GB of 667mhz ram will be throttled to 533mhz by the 1501 and possibly run cooler as a result. Thanks in advance for the assistance. P.S. I am also aware that because I'm running XP Home that I will only be using a max of 3 of the 4 GB of RAM that I ordered.

Specs:

1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1680x1050)
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
Size: 120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
Genuine Windows® XP Home
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1
CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
High Definition Audio 2.0
Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini Card
Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
Microsoft Works 8. DOES NOT INCLUDE MS WORD
No Subscription (only 30-day protection)
85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)

1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service
No ISP requested
Yahoo! Music Jukebox - Music Player
Inspiron 1520
Jet Black color w/ 2.0M pixel Camera
Intel® Core™2 Duo Label
Windows XP™
Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr

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Yes it will work everything you said is correct. The ram can be a bit tricky to change out on the 1520. One stick is under the laptop and the other is under the keyboard. Check out the link in my signature for a walk through on how to accomplish it.

 

Correct.
...

 

Why not settle with 2.5GB on the mrs' and 3gb on yours? This way, you won't go go through the trouble of going under the keyboard and maybe voiding the warranty. All you have to do now is uncrew 1 screw.

Good luck either way.

 

Because the 1501 can only accept 1 GB chips max for a total of 2 GB.

 

You wont void the warranty by replacing the ram under the keyboard.

Actually i think that it accepts 2gb sticks even though their site doesn't say so. That does sound like a good idea to go the 2.5 and 3gb route. Just see if it works, if not then tell her sorry :/

btw...i just finally figured out how to use multiquote...

 

It says max 2GB because at that time, 2GB sticks didn't exist.

 

Also, Dell said that mine will come with 2x.5G chips for a total of 1G so I'm pretty sure that my wife's probably has 2x 256M chips for a total of .5G. So the best I could do is 2.5G in mine and 2.25G in hers. Also, I've read that it's best to run matched chips for some reason. What is the worst that could happen from running a 667mhz 2G chip with a 533mhz 256M chip?

 

The 2 GB chip runs at 533. Or the world blows up.