Does the Dell Inspiron 1501 handle more than 4 Gb of RAM?
After the following comment on my last question, I'm thinking about upgrading my RAM:
I got a 160 GB Scorpio Blue a couple months ago for my 1501. It's nice. That + 2 GB Crucial RAM have rather revived my notebook (meaning a very nice speed and storage boost). I was outgrowing it... – Nathaniel
What would be the best choice to add more RAM? I've already got 2 GB, but I'm not sure what their speed is. What are the size, type and speed limitations for RAM on my particular laptop?
25 Answers
While many sources cite the max RAM as 2GB, the later posters in this thread seem to indicate that you can get more to work. From an OS/RAM standpoint, 4GB should be fine; the only concern would be if the chipset is limiting the amount of available RAM.
You could roll the dice from a place like Newegg with a decent return policy, or find a friend with a 2GB SODIMM that you could stick in temporarily just to see if it can recognize and use more than 2GB.
FWIW, I've seen this many times with laptops, where max RAM is erroneously reported due to the maximum size of modules that were configurable on the laptop as originally sold. That number is often used by other sources, when the reality may be much higher.
2I don't think you will have luck on that, specs say 2GB Max!
I have the Dell Inspiron 1501, Turion 64 x2(TL-56), Windows 7 Professional (64-bit), and 4Gb of PC-5300 ram installed. I had Vista Ultimate (64-bit), and while it worked reasonable well, it regularly consumed 2-3 Gb of RAM for no real reason. When I bought the laptop it came with 1Gb or RAM. I upgraded it to 2Gb as prices came down. I traded the 2Gb and some cash to a friend for a 4Gb set he bought that didn't work in his laptop. As the memory installed went up, so did the amount Vista used for itself. When i had 1Gb installed, Vista would take 800 Megs for itself. When I had 2Gb, Vista would use 1.3-1.5Gb. When I went to 4Gb, like i said above, Vista took 2-3Gb. As I type this, Windows 7 is using 40% of 4Gb, or 1.6Gb.
Bottom line - If you have an Inspiron 1501, I would STRONGLY recommend putting 4GB of RAM in it. This should be fine for most users and at this point is not an expensive upgrade that will dramatically improve performance. As soon as prices drop to around $200, I'll be putting 8GB in my laptop because I've read it works and I do CAD work on it.
I have an Inspiron 1501 witht the AMD Turion TL-56 and just found out my laptop will take more memory than Dell said it would. I received some memory from a friend from his broken Toshiba laptop 3 GB. I put it in and was amazed that it worked and well.
I could'nt agree more, I was running vista ultimate32, then upgraded the hard drive as well as the memory to 4gb and installed windows 7 64bit, everything (hardware) was upgraded perfectly through windows update, and it runs like a charm
