Dell T3500 - Non-Optimal Memory Installed???

gryffinwings

Member
Sep 28, 2018
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So I got my Dell T3500 in today and installed Windows 7 Professional, I am getting the error at boot, non-optimal memory installed. Mind you it's still running and it reads 8 GBs installed. So why am I getting this error? Could it be the memory is installed in the wrong slots?

Thanks for any advice.
 
Last edited:

Billy Tallis

Senior member
Aug 4, 2015
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Would you care to tell us anything about the machine?

Based on a quick Google search, it looks like the Dell T3500 is an old desktop workstation with a Westmere Xeon processor, so it has a triple-channel DRAM controller and optimal memory configurations will be to have three or six matched DIMMs installed to get the most memory bandwidth.
 

gryffinwings

Member
Sep 28, 2018
97
6
11
Would you care to tell us anything about the machine?

Based on a quick Google search, it looks like the Dell T3500 is an old desktop workstation with a Westmere Xeon processor, so it has a triple-channel DRAM controller and optimal memory configurations will be to have three or six matched DIMMs installed to get the most memory bandwidth.

Not much yet for it:

Dell Precision T3500
Windows 7 Pro
8GB split into 4 x 2GB - Hynix Brand, not idea what type, the label doesn't clearly say.
AMD FirePro V3750
Sandisk SSD Plus
 

tynopik

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2004
5,245
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it's not an error per se, it's just telling you that memory performance would be better if you had a third matched dimm in there

just ignore it
 

gryffinwings

Member
Sep 28, 2018
97
6
11
Nevermind, I ended up fixing the problem, the ram sticks were not installed in the correct slots, all the slots closest to the CPU were populated, I reinstalled ram sticks into DIMM slots 1-4. The error doesn't come up anymore. Also performance improved when I moved ram around.