RAM for Dell Poweredge

[mairving]

I have a couple of Dell PowerEdge 2650 Servers at work. Both have 2GB of RAM in them and both need to be upgraded to 4GB. The MB has 6 slots of which 2 have 1GB sticks in them. The motherboard supports 12GB but because of MS licensing, 4GB is the current maximum RAM.

So I need to upgrade both of these. What I figured to do would be to buy either 4 1GB sticks or 2 2GB sticks and pull 2 out of one server and put the new in the other server so as to have all of the same brand of RAM in one server.

My main problem is that I have to buy the RAM from CDW since we have an account with them. They have Crucial, Kingston, Viking, Edge and Simpletech. I would prefer Crucial, however, when I go to Crucial's site and run their configurator, I receive a different model of RAM than when I go to CDW and run their Crucial configurator. The price is also about $40 more per 1GB stick. Kingston is about $40 cheaper. In the past, I have never put RAM in a production server that wasn't Crucial, Corsair or Mushkin.

This is the RAM that Crucial recommends on their site.
This is the RAM that CDW says is for the server.
This is the RAM that Kingston recommends.

So what do you think?

[jayb1234]

Do they have an account with Dell?

I looked on their site and what they have is actually a little less expensive than the Crucial in the first link.

Couldn't tell the brand and googling the mfgr's part number came up empty.

You might try running cpuz and comparing what it shows to what the configurators are showing to see if the part numbers match.

[glc]

The Kingston you linked is a 2x512 kit, not a single 1gb.

I would get a 4gb kit or two 2gb kits of Kingston if you have to use CDW. Bios must be A10 or better for the 4gb kit to work.

Dell PowerEdge 2600/2650

Print this page

Kingston # Description CDW # Buy

KTD-PE2650/512 512MB DDR Kit 516149 Add

KTD-PE2650/1G 1GB DDR Kit 416950 Add

KTD-PE2650/2G 2GB DDR Kit 416951 Add

KTD-PE2650/4G 4GB DDR Kit 509129 Add

[mairving]

Originally Posted by jayb1234 Do they have an account with Dell? I looked on their site and what they have is actually a little less expensive than the Crucial in the first link. Couldn't tell the brand and googling the mfgr's part number came up empty. You might try running cpuz and comparing what it shows to what the configurators are showing to see if the part numbers match.

Yep, definitely have a Dell account. The RAM should be 533Mhz though.

Probably not a good idea to run cpuz on the server since I am getting Virtual Memory errors now. I would suspect that it could lock up the system. It does have Dell's OpenManage which tells me most of what I need to know without cracking the case.

Thanks.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by glc The Kingston you linked is a 2x512 kit, not a single 1gb. I would get a 4gb kit or two 2gb kits of Kingston if you have to use CDW. Bios must be A10 or better for the 4gb kit to work. Dell PowerEdge 2600/2650 Print this page Kingston # Description CDW # Buy KTD-PE2650/512 512MB DDR Kit 516149 Add KTD-PE2650/1G 1GB DDR Kit 416950 Add KTD-PE2650/2G 2GB DDR Kit 416951 Add KTD-PE2650/4G 4GB DDR Kit 509129 Add

The BIOS is A17.

The only problem with getting 2 2GB sticks is that they are usually more expensive than getting 4 1GB sticks. Is there any other advantage but the ability to upgrade easier in the future?

[glc]

No advantage. Get two 2gb kits if it's cheaper.