Faster Ram

[indicium]

I installed some Corsair Vengeance PC3-17000, 2133 MHz SO-DIMM's today and had an interesting experience. When first installed, they were both in the slots under the keyboard and the W530 wouldn't even POST. So I immediately thought that they wouldn't work in it, however I decided to see if maybe one of them was bad. I removed one and the machine booted up fine, at this point I swapped out the other s0-dimm and it also booted and ran fine. Then I tried moving one into the slots on the bottom and my first choice didn't work but putting it in the other slot worked great and CPU-Z reported that they were operating at 2130 MHz. The odd thing about this was that I had to put the DIMM's into Slots 0 and 1 for them to work together. When I originally bought the Crucial PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) and then the Crucial Ballastix Sport PC3-14900 (1866 MHz), I only purchased 16 GB the first time and put both under the keyboard and they worked perfectly. This made it easier when I got the additional RAM and could install it on the bottom. Now to order the additional RAM and get back to 32 GB and move the Ballastix to the work W530.

You gotta love XMP RAM!

[WizardOfBoz]

This is interesting. Just to be sure I understand, you are saying that the W530 will tolerate the overspeced XMP memory, but it depends upon which socket yo put it in. Yes? Are you also saying that the W530 can exploit the XMP (e.g. by amping up the clock rate from 1600 to 1833 and 2/3, or whatever XMP supports)? Did I get this right?

I saw a post on the Lenovo site where a guy claimed that he'd added

32 GB Crucial Ballistix PC3-14900 (1866 MHz) which works great in both. They run at 1864 MHz (932 MHz x2). The intel chipset supports XMP which allow the RAM to fun at its stated speed and net be clocked down.

If this is true, any downside to installing the PC3-14900 in my W530? Is the memory clock-rate constant or dependent upon load? Will my battery life suffer? How much of a boost will this give my numeric intensive programs? Will thermal mgmt be an issue? I do run some numerically intensive stuff (half-hour to two-hour runs, lots of number crunching). So it matters.

Thanks!

W530, i7-3820QM, 8Gb (currently) RAM, Samsung 850 Pro 512Gb, K2000M, 1080p, Win 7 Pro 64.

[StevenD]

Hi. I have a question about faster RAM, too. I'm in the market for probably a W541. I was going to replace their 4GB with much more, purchased elsewhere for a better price. Is there a problem with replacing their 1600 ram with the fastest I can find? How do I know what is compatible, and whether the faster speed will be used by the computer, or make a difference if it is used?

[indicium]

I'm not sure about the W541, but on the W530, I found out that it would accept higher speed memory that had XMP. I'm using PC3-14900 1866 MHz in XMP mode with no problem and I find that it is faster for my needs. I did try the PC3-17000 2133 MHz SO-DIMM's in my systems but in one it would only use Single Channel and in the other it wouldn't boot and this was XMP also.

[gma]

I installed some Corsair Vengeance PC3-17000, 2133 MHz SO-DIMM's today and had an interesting experience. When first installed, they were both in the slots under the keyboard and the W530 wouldn't even POST.

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but I think this info is still quite relevant to plenty of us today.

I've just experienced something very similar with my W530 and some HyperX Impact 2133MHz RAM. I was upgrading from 1600MHz RAM and installed 2 x 8GB of 2133MHz in the slots under the keyboard. The slots underneath were empty. The machine wouldn't boot (black screen).

I tried the same RAM in my X230. It wouldn't boot either, showing a black screen (but has been running perfectly fine for almost 2 years with 2 x 8GB of 1600MHz).

I put it in my T430, which booted up straight away.

I put the sticks in the slot underneath the W530 and it booted fine, but as soon as I started using the machine I began experiencing segfaults (about once every 45 minutes).

My W530 has been my main machine for 9 months now, and has been perfectly stable with 1600MHz RAM (2 x 4GB under the keyboard, 1 x 8GB underneath).

I booted the W530 into memtest86 with the 2133MHz sticks installed. It immediately started reporting errors at a rate of several per second. I stopped it fairly quickly, but not before it had reported several hundred errors.

I put one 2133MHz stick back into the T430, and memtest86 reported a clean bill of health after 4 passes of all tests. I tried the second stick, and again, no errors. I put both sticks in together and re-ran 4 passes of all tests. Again, no errors.

While I could return the 2133MHz sticks and get something that's more likely to work in all my machines, I'm going to leave the 2133MHz sticks in the T430 and see how it performs in practice. I suspect it'll be fine, and if it isn't I'll learn something.

I'll get some 1866MHz sticks for the W530 and re-run the tests.

And while we're on the subject, the memtest86 manual is well worth a read for anybody experiencing errors of this sort. The sections on diagnosing memory problems and how to use memtest86 for overclocking (where they talk about margins) are interesting.

UPDATE: The 1866MHz sticks are working great in both the W530 (32GB) and X230 (16GB). memtest86+ completed without errors on both.

[axur-delmeria]

IMHO, some of these issues could be properly diagnosed (and hopefully solved) if memory speed and timing settings were available in BIOS.

[jcholsap]

I booted the W530 into memtest86 with the 2133MHz sticks installed. It immediately started reporting errors at a rate of several per second. I stopped it fairly quickly, but not before it had reported several hundred errors.

I put one 2133MHz stick back into the T430, and memtest86 reported a clean bill of health after 4 passes of all tests. I tried the second stick, and again, no errors. I put both sticks in together and re-ran 4 passes of all tests. Again, no errors.

UPDATE: The 1866MHz sticks are working great in both the W530 (32GB) and X230 (16GB). memtest86+ completed without errors on both.

I'm having an almost identical experience as reported here. The only difference is I have (2) W530, (1) T530, and (2) T430 laptops for testing, It's the W530s that has stability/boot issues with HyperX 2133MHz sticks.1866MHz works everywhere. Will upgrade to 2.69 firmware (2017) and test and share results.

What version of firmware are you using?

[gma]

What version of firmware are you using?

Interesting…

On the W530 that I reported on above, I'm running BIOS version "G5ET95WW (2.55)" released on 13 September 2013 (as reported using `dmidecode` in Linux). It also says I'm running Firmware Revision 1.12.

[atagunov]

Is there any measurable benefit of using these faster RAM sticks though? %)

[heilong]

I have two sets of 2x8 GB HyperX Impact 2133 MHz DDR3L modules.
On my X230, either set works fine at 2133 MHz.
However, when I put 2 or all 4 of these modules in my W530, I get a black screen on boot if the RAM Speed Limit in BIOS is set to Auto or 2133 MHz.
Setting the RAM Speed Limit to 1866 MHz makes them work.
I really wonder who's the culprit, and is it fixable somehow...