Can I upgrade my motherboard to 32gb of RAM?

Question

I bought an HP Pavilion P6553w a number of months ago and it maxes out at 16gb of RAM. I have maxed it out with 4 x 4gb DDR3. I now see that 8GB chips are out and wonder if it can goto 32gb of RAM.

Here is the board it uses: H-Alpinia-RS780L-uATX (Alpinia)

All I read on HP says 16gb, but Is that because there were not 8gb chips at that time? I dont see any BIOS updates listed either.

Does anyone know how I can find this out?

I could buy an 8gb chip and try, but who knows if the store would take it back!

Solution 1

The board is based on the AMD 760g chipset. If we take a look at the other boards based on the same chipset from Asus or MSI they seem to support 32GB so I'd suggest go ahead and give it a shot. RAM is anyway retailing at rock bottom prices these days.

Solution 2

When the motherboard specs state...

Supports up to 16 GB on 64-bit systems (DIMMs run at DDR3-1066)

...it means that is the limit.

The likelihood of it working with the 8GB DIMMS is not good. Yes. you can try it, but most stores will not take back RAM which has been removed from its package.

Solution 3

There is no guarantee that the 8GB modules will be accepted, but some other motherboards using this chipset made by other manufacturers can accept such modules as noted in the other answers. If you do buy, make sure that you can return the modules if they don't work.

However, there is one other thing that has been overlooked: whether the operating system will accept 32GB of memory. Windows 7 Home Premium will not accept more than 16 GB of physical memory. If you are running Home Premium, you will need to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional (US$89.95 through Windows Anytime Upgrade), which accepts up to 192 GB of memory.

Comments

[rob]

I've had motherboards in the past that were able to support more than the max RAM stated in the original manual. Sometimes it requires a BIOS update; sometimes it's just that the higher-density modules were not available at the time of testing.

[Synetech]

> ...it means that is the limit. Not necessarily; like he said, it could just be the limit imposed by the maximum size of available RAM sticks and number of RAM slots. You are correct about the chances of 8GB sticks working though since they were not available for testing/implementing when the board was made (and like he said, no BIOS update has been made available).

[afrazier]

I've had the same experiences as @rob. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and in the absence of other users attempting the same thing all that can be done is to try.

[Jason]

Perfect. I went and bought a single 8GB, installed it and yup, recognized fine. Thanks!

[afrazier]

Once in a while you'll run into a system that won't work when all the slots are filled with high density RAM.