04-11-2024, 06:46 AM
Hello.
I have a Dell N5010 laptop. It has the Intel G1 socket supporting 1st gen Intel Core CPUs. I've been using it with the i7-940XM with no issues.
Everyone online seems to agree that this laptop supports a max of 8GB of memory. Intel also says that the CPU can't take more than 8GB (perhaps a copy-paste mistake from some Arrandale CPU for the same socket, as those can in fact address only up to 8GB. The i7-940XM is a Clarksfield CPU).
However, there are numerous reports that another laptop with the same CPU support, Lenovo W510, can run with 16 or even 32GBs of memory.
So I decided to experiment and got myself a pair of 8GB 1333 MT/s DDR3 SODIMMs and installed them in my laptop. With the i7-940XM, the laptop boots into Windows just fine and all 16GBs of memory seem to be usable. However, after a few minutes up to a few hours some apps start to crash and Windows itself eventually bluescreens as well.
Following that, I got another 2x8GB DDR3 kit from G.Skill, thinking maybe the memory is faulty. But with it installed the results are the same. If I recall correctly from my testing, having only one of those 8GB DIMMs with the other slot empty didn't cause the stability issues. So It's almost like if there is more than 8GBs of memory, it gets corrupted after some time.
I also tested under two different Windows installations, two different motherboards and two different i7-940XMs to eliminate any of that as a possible cause.
One of the motherboards I tested with has the stock Dell A15 bios, and the other one has this modded version.
So my question is, could the issues I'm experiencing have something to do with the BIOS? How come that Lenovo laptop has no issues running with 16GB and mine has? The only other difference is the chipset.
I have a Dell N5010 laptop. It has the Intel G1 socket supporting 1st gen Intel Core CPUs. I've been using it with the i7-940XM with no issues.
Everyone online seems to agree that this laptop supports a max of 8GB of memory. Intel also says that the CPU can't take more than 8GB (perhaps a copy-paste mistake from some Arrandale CPU for the same socket, as those can in fact address only up to 8GB. The i7-940XM is a Clarksfield CPU).
However, there are numerous reports that another laptop with the same CPU support, Lenovo W510, can run with 16 or even 32GBs of memory.
So I decided to experiment and got myself a pair of 8GB 1333 MT/s DDR3 SODIMMs and installed them in my laptop. With the i7-940XM, the laptop boots into Windows just fine and all 16GBs of memory seem to be usable. However, after a few minutes up to a few hours some apps start to crash and Windows itself eventually bluescreens as well.
Following that, I got another 2x8GB DDR3 kit from G.Skill, thinking maybe the memory is faulty. But with it installed the results are the same. If I recall correctly from my testing, having only one of those 8GB DIMMs with the other slot empty didn't cause the stability issues. So It's almost like if there is more than 8GBs of memory, it gets corrupted after some time.
I also tested under two different Windows installations, two different motherboards and two different i7-940XMs to eliminate any of that as a possible cause.
One of the motherboards I tested with has the stock Dell A15 bios, and the other one has this modded version.
So my question is, could the issues I'm experiencing have something to do with the BIOS? How come that Lenovo laptop has no issues running with 16GB and mine has? The only other difference is the chipset.