Hope everyone is doing well here. I have a Dell Studio XPS 7100: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor (6 CPUs), ~3.2GHz 8GB of RAM (2GBX4) 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5670 460W PSU 1TB SATA 2 7200rpm HD It says the motherboard is Dell 0GK1K2 (can't find specs for this online): http://www.ascendtech.us/dell-gk1k2-studio-xps-7100-motherboard_i_mbdgk1k2xps7100.aspx I have yet to open up the tower and look inside myself, but there should be an extra SATA connection and one more 3.5" drive bay. I want to upgrade the RAM to the max (16GB across 4 4GB sticks or 2 8GB sticks or whatever it needs to be) and need to add a slave drive (looking at 2TB-3TB) as my master drive is near 80% full (not good). I need to know if these upgrades can be handled safely by the current power supply. I called Dell and was told: 1. Max RAM each slot can handle is 4GB or 8GB (got two different answers from two different people) 2. If I add a slave drive bigger than 1TB, there will be problems with the PSU I don't want to put too much in here and cause a problem with the PSU (won't that kill the computer entirely)? Questions: 1. So can I make these upgrades safely or not without also upgrading the current PSU? 2. Is there a way for me to check the insides of my computer to know what is exactly in there (using software)? 3. Is there a way for me to test to see if these upgrades will be safe? 4. SATA 3 is backwards compatible with SATA 2 right (so a SATA 3 drive will work on a SATA 2 connection)? 5. What RAM and HD's would you guys recommend? 6. Can Windows 7 Ultimate support a 3TB HD as a slave drive with no problems? I am always open to just buying an external HD and taking space off the master that way also. Thanks!
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/Studio7100/en/sm/techov.htm#wp1194395 http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/Studio7100/en/sm/index.htm 16gigs of ram & supposedly 460w psu. look under specs page 60 http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/Studio7100/en/sg/sg_en.pdf Your power supply rating should be greater than 448.5 watts http://www.vbutils.com/powercalc.ph...tnSubmit=Let's+Go+-+Calculate+my+power+supply
Thanks for all of that info ddp. I used the PSU calculator (might be wrong) and it is telling me: Your power supply rating should be greater than 472.5 watts. So lets say I go ahead and hook everything up, what is the worst that could happen? Guess I will either buy a 550/600W PSU (will have to check what needs to be on what rails) or just buy an external HD.
it could blow things like drives, motherboard, ram & other things or behave normally. can always upgrade the psu later when you get the 2nd tb drive. do you really need a 2nd internal drive that big that you can't use on other computers? go external. i was taking guesses on the calc as i didn't know exactly what you had except for your list. should have no problem with 3tb as external.
Yea I figured the computer could blow up. It seems like i will go external for the time being (quickest and easiest fix). I downloaded the program mentioned here and max RAM per dimm is unknown: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/what-kind-of-memory-does-my-computer-have-installed/ I am a bit worried now though because with my current setup, the PSU calculator says: Your power supply rating should be greater than 466.5 watts. and my PSU is 460W!! (Lets hope I or the calculator am wrong) Was looking to use something like this for the ram (DDR3 SDRAM - PC10666, 1333MHz): http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6611013&CatId=3433 I assume maxing the RAM from 8GB to 16GB will increase the power used, so maybe I shouldn't max the RAM either?
I do a lot of video conversion (usually HD h.264 mkv to SD xvid avi), subtitle editing, subtitle embedding, and play a lot of video games. Usually my 8GB of RAM goes by pretty fast, this may be due to a memory leak, but I am not sure how to find or fix it. I will leave the computer on the desktop with nothing special going on and the RAM usually continues to drop.
