Thinkpads Forum

Hi Guys/Girls,

I just got a nice w500 machine (x9900 cpu) and I want to upgrade the memory. Now on the Crucial memory site it states the maximum is 8 Gigs of RAM. Is it possible to upgrade the memory to 16 Gigs of Ram? If so what memory modules would I need to get. I ask because I know that the t61p can go to 16 Gigs of RAM (from what I have read but it is expensive). I did use Search in the forum but did not find the answer to my question. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
John

I'm 99% sure the max the W500 (and any _61 series) can use is 8GB.

Hi Mario,

Thanks for responding to my message. So it's 8 Gigs then.

Talk to you soon,
John

mariol90 is most certainly correct.

_61, and _400/_500 all max out at 8GB.

Thanks Jeff for double verifying.

John

JeffCullen wrote:mariol90 is most certainly correct.

_61, and _400/_500 all max out at 8GB.

But the key info here is "why"? Where does this info come from?
Because of chipset limitation, or because the manufacturer said so?

If its the later, then the claim has very little value. Manufacturers, including IBM/Lenovo, are notorious for giving false "max RAM supported" ratings to their laptops. The reason being that higher capacity RAM modules usually become available some time after the laptop has been released, and so manufacturer never tested nor cares about if their older model supports up-to-date RAM capacities.

Therefore the only thing that matters is whether laptop components (chip) can support given amount of RAM, and not the manufacturer's claim.

Now, ThinkPad W500 has PM45 Express chipset in it. So, to find out the actual capabilities of that laptop, we go to Intel website. Intel is a chip manufacturer, not a laptop manufacturer, and therefore will give you the real answer.

And the answer is... 8 GB

This time, at least, Lenovo got it right.

8gb DIMMs are not recognized

I made an inquiry to a small Santa Clara company that manufactures and sells specialty DIMMs on eBay. Their reply was that nothing could be done to go above 8GB with that chipset.

Lockheed wrote:So, to find out the actual capabilities of that laptop, we go to Intel website. Intel is a chip manufacturer, not a laptop manufacturer, and therefore will give you the real answer.

Nope. You can't trust Intel's information either. On this particular issue, they are right, but many times the info on their website has been misleading, confusing, or wrong.

I think in this case it is a chipset limitation