So... Server RAM...

mrkvchm · January 13, 2019

I nabbed an older xeon system on ebay recently for a project I'm working on. It came with only 4GB ram, but I need 16GB. I nabbed a good deal for 16GB ECC memory on kijiji, but my system doesn't want to post with it. I don't know if there's something I'm missing here...

The system came with (and works with) 2 of these: PC3-10600E-9-10-E0 (2GB stick) Model number MT18JSF25672AY-1G4D1

The ram I got is 4 of these: PC3-10600R-09-10-E1-P0 (4GB stick) Model number M393B5170EH1-CH9Q1

The server is a Dell Poweredge T310 with a Xeon X3470. The documentation on dells website seems to indicate that I should be able to use either UDIMM or RDIMM. But I've tried these new ram modules one at a time and I can't get anything to appear on screen at all with any of them. I don't know what I'm missing here... Would anyone have any idea what I can try?

Thanks!

Radium_Angel · January 14, 2019

20 minutes ago, mrkvchm said:

I nabbed an older xeon system on ebay recently for a project I'm working on. It came with only 4GB ram, but I need 16GB. I nabbed a good deal for 16GB ECC memory on kijiji, but my system doesn't want to post with it. I don't know if there's something I'm missing here...

The system came with (and works with) 2 of these: PC3-10600E-9-10-E0 (2GB stick) Model number MT18JSF25672AY-1G4D1

The ram I got is 4 of these: PC3-10600R-09-10-E1-P0 (4GB stick) Model number M393B5170EH1-CH9Q1

The server is a Dell Poweredge T310 with a Xeon X3470. The documentation on dells website seems to indicate that I should be able to use either UDIMM or RDIMM. But I've tried these new ram modules one at a time and I can't get anything to appear on screen at all with any of them. I don't know what I'm missing here... Would anyone have any idea what I can try?

Thanks!

I have the exact same server and getting RAM for it is a right royal bitch. It's the only Dell PE that I've run across that is that picky about RAM. It got so bad that I went with non-ECC RAM, just to get something in the damn thing.

mrkvchm · May 25, 2019

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I eventually solved this issue and thought someone landing here from Google way in the future might be interested in how this story ended.

According to this, dual-rank 4GB RDIMMs are not supported. They have to be either dual-rank UDIMMs or QUAD-rank RDIMMs. I eventually got some quad-rank 8GB RDIMMs from eBay which have been working just fine.

"Rank" is not a RAM specification I had ever heard of before. And what's even more confusing is that the information in that post actually conflicts with the information in the Dell Poweredge T310 user manual which actually states that my original RAM should have been fine. Man, server hardware is confusing. You don't even wanna know about the motherboard form factor and CPU cooling situation in this thing...

Radium_Angel · May 26, 2019

6 hours ago, mrkvchm said:

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I eventually solved this issue and thought someone landing here from Google way in the future might be interested in how this story ended.

According to this, dual-rank 4GB RDIMMs are not supported. They have to be either dual-rank UDIMMs or QUAD-rank RDIMMs. I eventually got some quad-rank 8GB RDIMMs from eBay which have been working just fine.

"Rank" is not a RAM specification I had ever heard of before. And what's even more confusing is that the information in that post actually conflicts with the information in the Dell Poweredge T310 user manual which actually states that my original RAM should have been fine. Man, server hardware is confusing. You don't even wanna know about the motherboard form factor and CPU cooling situation in this thing...

All good.

I play with many Dell servers, only the T310 is a bastard about RAM, the rest are quite straightforward. Unsure what Dell was thinking when they made it.