Dell Poweredge 2650 RAM Upgrade

Hi,

I bought an old Dell Poweredge 2650 off ebay to use as a dev server, but I need to get more RAM for it. From what I understand there were 2 versions of the 2650 released, with the older version only supporting PC1600 RAM (200MHz) and the 2nd version supporting PC2400. Unfortunately Dell thought it wasn't necessary to label their servers as such so I can't tell what version I have.

Does anyone know if there is a way to tell without buying and testing RAM in the server?

From serverfault Otaku Coder

• If it runs, you could check with SIW for windows, or lshw on linux

  Otaku Coder : Thanks, I'll remember that for future reference, but unfortunately I don't have any DDR RAM to boot the server up and test it.

  Warner : dmidecode would probably be more appropriate in Linux.
  From The Journeyman geek

• If you enter the support section of the Dell website, and enter the server's service tag, you can then click on the link 'System Configuration' listed under the 'product support' section.

  When I do this with my Dell servers, it tells me the speed of the memory supplied with the system.

  I've tried to give you a hyperlink for 'System Configuration', but it seems to contain lots of session data, if I attempt to remove it, I get redirected to an error page.

  Edit: Try this link, it might work.

  Dave M : +1 Dell support is usually great for this. Servcie Tag gives a wealth of info.
  From Bryan

• Thanks Bryan, but this is what the wonderful Dell Service Tag lookup yields:

  ... 1GB ECC DDR MEMORY, (2X512MB) ...

  I guess I just get some DDR ECC RAM and 'plug and pray' to see if it works!

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• Not an expert on RAM, but Kingston.com just shows one option for RAM. Personally, I'd get a couple of PC2400 sticks and try it - if there aren't any pin differences between the two, it's probably just a speed difference, and the faster memory should work at the slower speeds.

  From chris

• Here are the memory specs for the PE2650:

  Memory

  Architecture 72-bit ECC PC-1600 DDR SDRAM DIMMs, with 2-way interleaving

  Memory module sockets six 72-bit wide 184-pin DIMM sockets

  Memory module capacities 128-, 256-, 512 MB, or 1-GB registered SDRAM DIMMs, rated for 200-MHz DDR operation

  Minimum RAM 256 MB

  Maximum RAM 6 GB

  And here's the user manual section on installing\adding memory:

  http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2650/en/it/5g375c60.htm#1070776

  From joeqwerty