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Hello all,

I'm looking to upgrade the RAM on my Dell Inspiron 530. I currently have 3gb and would like to go to 6gb. My only concern is that the motherboard won't support the additional RAM. How can I find this out?

I'm running 64-bit Vista.

Generally I visit http://www.crucial.com/ and tell it what kind of system I've got.

TDI on point with that. You'll want to update your BIOS, too, to the latest. I think on earlier revisions the BIOS limited you to 4 GB regardless of the motherboard's abilities.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... pendix.htm

2/3rd of the way down are some diagrams of different motherboards. If you have 4 DIMM slots, you have either the 530, 503a, or 530c.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-fo ... 51566.aspx

Some more pics at the end of that thread, too. I've got a 530 and will do a 3 GB to 8 GB sometime. I forget what revision my mobo is but I am running a Q6600 and I looked into this before and I'm good to go. Perhaps it's silkscreened on the motherboard as the FoxConn part number?

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2008/04/do ... -you-read/ (to reinforce that a BIOS update is needed in this case)

Thanx for the replies guys. The links that Scrotos posted were helpful. It looks like you can put more that 4gb on these motherboards regardless of what dell says. I hope this is the case and dell didn't somehow cripple the MB's somehow.

Well, just to clarify, the motherboards ARE limited by the BIOS if you haven't upgraded them. And I know certain ones physically don't support quad-core CPUs (or, I suppose, CPUs of a certain TDP) so there are differences.

I assume mobos with only 2 DIMM slots could only do 2 x 2GB for 4 GB max so you'd be limited by that, too. I don't know why the 530 would have different memory support than the 530a/530c and I'm hopin' you'll be fine regardless.

Looking again more carefully, the 530 (non a/c) is the only one with a floppy connector next to the power connectors. So if you have a floppy connector, you might be hosed. Only one way to find out, though.

I think I'll take a shot at the upgrade. If it doesn't work at least I'll get an extra gig outta of it. Just need to stop buying Dell and start my own system soon.

In a spot of irony, I stopped building my own and started getting Dells because I was lazy and they worked well enough! Ah, good times!

Ha! Im pretty lazy too, but I'm getting tired of having to worry if my upgrade will work on the dell, too much hassle.

Do you know if any specific brand of memory works better with Dell's than others. I bought RAM a couple years ago for an older Dell I had and it wouldn't work.

I'd recommend either using the "wizard" on Crucial's website or the memory finder on newegg. Usually Samsung or Kingston "value" type ram will always work.

What he said. I don't think the Inspiron has any esoteric RAM requirements. It's a pretty plain mobo, more or less. The only thing is the tools might think it's a 4 GB max. As long as you get the same timings and speeds listed, you can just find a 2 GB chip with the same specs and you should be good to go.

I have a Dell inspiron 530 and i upgraded to Vista 64 bit. Then went to dell website and got the free upgrade for BIOS and now i've installed 8GB RAM AND THE COMPUTER DOES RECOGNIZE IT. Was a fairly slow computer now this thing is really fast was worth every penny in my opinion

TDIdriver wrote:

I'd recommend either using the "wizard" on Crucial's website or the memory finder on newegg. Usually Samsung or Kingston "value" type ram will always work.

I'll second the vote for Kingston's "ValueRAM" series. I've used it extensively at home and work, and the compatibility has been excellent.

BTW, I finally got around to pimping out my 530. 8 GB of RAM and swapped the CPU from a Q6600 to a Q9300. I actually put the Q6600 into a Dell XPS 410 and upgraded the RAM to 8 GB as well (with the OEM Ageia PhysX card!). Now they are both sittin' in a corner for me to find something fun to do with 'em. Ah, good times.

If you don't know where to begin, I third the recommendation for the "Crucial Memory Advisor Tool" at http://www.crucial.com/. I check there, then find an equivalent product from Newegg that's almost guaranteed to be cheaper, then check the price of that same product from Amazon.

Speccy is a free program that is also super handy if you want to know everything there is to know about the hardware of your computer. It's useful for identifying how many RAM slots you have and how many are populated, what speed your processor is running at, temps of various components, RAM timings, etc. Really neat little program.

For a nice computer (e.g. my enthusiast/budget hybrid for audio production and gaming at home), I build from Newegg/Amazon. For a cheap computer, desktop or laptop, I buy from Dell Outlet. Once a month, they have a sale for 20-25% off their already low prices. And if you don't juice up the specs and don't need a powerful CPU, their buying power is ridiculous.

The Dell Outlet search tools are laughably bad, so just pick Business if you want Windows 7 or Home if you want Windows 8, then click View All Laptops if you want a laptop, or View All Desktops if you want a desktop. Then do not filter with the check boxes that don't work, just sort by price. Find the cheapest computer with a processor you approve of for your needs, then assess how much extra it is for the version with 8 GB of RAM. If it's a slight price change, buy the one with 8 GB of RAM. If it's a big price change, buy the one with 2 or 4 GB or RAM then purchase the extra RAM from Newegg right away. Do not buy an SSD from Dell, overpriced crap. But buying something like the Samsung 840 EVO is a fantastic upgrade, and it's not that much of an extra hassle to install the OS fresh on a new SSD if the computer is brand new and doesn't have programs or files on it yet anyway. That's my secret for easy, cheap computers.

But be careful: they will skimp on components if they can. The most recent desktop I bought like this surprised me when it came with only 2 RAM slots and only 1 PCIe slot. But I'm sure I could have avoided that if I paid attention during ordering.

Make sure that when you upgrade your RAM (with any computer, ever), you install it dual-channel (or tri- or quad- if it supports it, most don't). This normally means tossing your old RAM and using even-numbered quantities of identical new RAM sticks. But it really makes a difference in speed. Really.