I have a salvage T1600 workstation that I'd like to build up and populate with at least 16 GB of memory (it takes DDR3 1333). I have 2x2GB unbuffered cards already. Can I add 2x8 cards for a total of 20GB? Will the memory controller handle and the BIOS recognize size-mismatched cards? Will this affect memory speed, e.g. interleaving. Surprisingly, the Dell service manual is silent on this question. The machine has a Quad Core Xeon E3-1225, 3.10 G Hz with a C206 chipset.

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4 Answers

Either way 20GB should not work on an older BIOS. The spec sheet says 16GB ECC, and 8GB non-ECC is supported. "Unbuffered" says nothing about being ECC or not; I have "unbuffered ECC" in one of my workstations.

Then Dell updated things a bit it looks like to accommodate 32GB. I would assume this would require the latest BIOS. Sadly they did not document if the max memory for ECC/non-ECC specifically which would go to assume 32GB will work with either type.

As of note, conflicting information in the same document says 4GB per module max (16GB max if 4x4GB), so you really a left a bit on your own. Such is life buying used unsupported equipment.

This means you can stab in the dark and try the configuration you mentioned without any guarantees it will work but SHOULD work if your BIOS is updated and the memory is all compatible.

Compatibility is another issue that Dell itself cannot guarantee without testing and measuring just like you need to do.

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Dell Precision Workstation T1600 Max RAM supported:

(4x8GB) 32GB Unbuffered ECC Or (4x4GB) 16GB Non-ECC

So if you have unbuffered ECC sticks, then 8GB unbuffered ECC sticks will work together.

All I can say is that mine has 4 rams slots and 1 of the ram slots has a single 8gb ram stick in it.So I assume from that you can run 4x 8gb ram sticks but I will not know for sure until I try it myself.

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I have T1600 that came with 2x 4GB PC3-10600E (unbuffered) DDR3-1333 DIMMs.

I added 2x 8GB PC3-12800E DDR3-1600 unbuffered DIMMs. (taking a bit of a risk as there's conflicting information about whether this works).

The motherboard doesn't support 1600Mhz, but all four DIMMs work together at 1333Mhz so I have a total of 24GB working.

This suggests that the questioner's 20GB configuration and up to 8+8+8+8 will work as well.

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