I've been having a ram problem on Dell machines for most of this year & recently, Tom (Brother) called & asked if I had any PC2700(333mhz) sticks spare as his EPS Server was playing up & he wanted to maximise the ram. He put in 2x 1gb PC2700 sticks & the motherboard failed to see it. Reinstalled the PC2100(266mhz - 2x 512mb) & no problems.

Quite a few of the residents in my area have Dell SFF rigs & OptiPlex tower rigs. Most have 2x 256mb PC2100 or PC2700. Checking the rigs out through the Dell site, I found that most of them will take either 266mhz or 333 mhz sticks. Some of the rigs will take 333mhz only if the fsb is 400mhz & will clock the ram down to 266mhz.

On most of these, I've tried 2x 1gb PC2700 & each time, it was not seen, & one one particular rig, tried 2x 1gb PC2100 & that was not seen.

While at one of my suppliers yesterday, I bumped into Tom, who was discussing the problem with the tech guy, who told us that it could be down to the ram, i.e., Singled sided or double sided & also on the amount of chips onboard the stick (4 per side or 8 per side etc). This is a new one on me & tried this solution on 3 Dell rigs last night - Still no joy!

Anyone had a similar problem & if so, how did they resolve it?

This is really bugging me as I've spent too much time on this issue, but at the same time, I cannot let my customers down as they give me repeat business & also new customers - One of the Dell owners has ordered a new rig & given me 2 new customers for complete systems which will be built later today.

I don't deal with Dell in particular, but I have seen the number of sides with chips and number of chips per side issue on some motherboards (e.g. Max RAM = 2GB, but max RAM chip sides = 6 so if you put in 4 double sided 512MB RAM chips (8 "sides") it will only register 1.5GB (first 3 sticks only) instead of 2.0GB; 2 double sided 512MB and 2 single sided 512MB chips (6 sides) would register the proper 2.0GB size). One thing to check is if the MB even supports larger than 512MB RAM per slot. I'd think in this day and age that would be a given, but you never know where Dell has "cheaped out" to make the PC affordable (some MB manufacturers actually like limiting the RAM size on their cheaper boards - there's got to be something "special" about the more expensive board after all...). I actually ran into this issue with 2 motherboards that were virtually identical, except one was $20 more and could take more RAM per slot. Can't remember what else was different about the boards, but it wasn't anything breath taking or even noticable to my recollection (some chipsets, number of PCI slots/RAM slots/USB/etc, CPU slot, design, etc) - and, yes, I was the one with the "cheaper" board and my friend had the more expensive one.

One quick thing to do is simply to do is update the BIOS and see if a newer BIOS revision fixes the issue - just remember to set the BIOS to default settings prior to updating or you may have BIOS post issues after the update.

Thanks User312. All the Dell's tested had their bios up to date. This is one of the main reasons why I stopped buying retail years ago & went to self-build.
I've tried everything I could think of & pretty certain that the ram slots are limited.

Saying that, even though this problem really bugs me, it has led to one of the Dell owners to scrap the machine & go for a new build - Surprisingly, I have a teaser ready - finished it earlier today. The case really surprised me as to the quality of the build & it's quietness - It only has 1x 120mm & 1x 80mm case fan.
Will photo it tomorrow & add it to "the crunching room". I like it so much, I named it, Dacom-5 & might keep it (All my rigs as shown on my account pages on the projects are Dacom-xx & all customer rigs are NET-xx).

Can't actually sell it just yet as I received a nasty surprise after installing XP Pro. I always install the programs required & make sure that all AV, updates, service packs are up to date before activating.

Activated this one & it WOULD not activate - checked all details & found that the supplier who provided this copy had fudged the COA - It had the Product Key shown quite clearly, but the name of the O/S was severely fudged - I know - It's down to me to check, but when you are dealing with someone that you have dealt with for several years you don't expect things like this. I'm pretty certain that the key is for Windows 2000 Pro. The worst part is that I have no more left until next trip south.

I've e-mailed MS anyway as I dislike these types of incidents. Why someone should attempt these for the sake of a few pounds, not realising that it will now cost him the loss of several £1000's per year is beyond me!

At work we support mostly Dell (well all dell except for a small test period where we baught IBM machines, just before they sold the Home PC to Lenovo) and from personal experience I know we have had quite a time getting ram to work on older optiplexes like GX260's.. GX60's... We tried sourcing ram from a cheaper supplier and ended up, after much frustration buying ram directly from dell. I wish I could be more help, but we took the easy way out- so to speak.

Thanks Silk_311, I have considered that but the customers won't spend the money - without having to cause any racial problems, I'll just say that they want the best quality for as little as possible.

For example, I've just had a regular ask me to upgrade his IBM Thinkpad T40 laptop. I sourced the ram & told him that it will cost £36 inclusive. He went to maplins & bought one for £26.00 & now wants me to install it free of charge - He's been told it will cost £15.00 installation. He hasn't come back, which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing because over the past several months he has wasted my time.

I found a GX60 outback at work and took the ram out just to see what it was...

Infineon
hys64d16301gu-7-b
16mx64
pc2100
128mb, ddr, 133mhz, cl2

chips on only one side.

I purposely got 2x 512mb PC3200 SSD & it still wouldn't boot up. I think it will only take SSD PC2100 or PC2700.

Well I'll be flabberghastered.........The 2x 512mb were Kingston memory I had the rig in over the weekend & as a test, I tried 2x 512mb ddr400 Hymix ssd that I took out of my server (upgraded to 4gb).......both sticks worked in the GX60

Weird or what!!! Also, it's now crunching away as NET-19.

One happy customer & one happy tech

update....

I've just finished upgrading another Dell SFF (d530). It had the same problem with ram, so installed 2 more Hymix sticks (512mb) & they worked. However, while in London last weekend, I bought 2x 1gb Hymix sticks & tried them - they would not work - weird!!! They won't be wasted as I've got 3gb on desktop - 2 sticks are Hymix 512mb, so will take them out & use for another Dell when they come for upgrading.