Why can my laptop only support 2GB of RAM?

Question

i want to upgrade the memory on my dell inspiron 1501 laptop, and it has space for two modules so i was thinking two 2GB sticks to total out to 4GB. i was searching around and people seem to advise that the maximum memory for this laptop is 2GB. If two 2GB sticks are compatible, what is the worst that could happen? would it just ignore the extra 2GB making them totally worthless or is it worth my money.

thanks in advance for you help.

Answer 1

Dont waste your money on nothing. It says that the max it can support is 2Gb, so it can do 3 things:

It will not read either of the 2Gb sticks

It will read 1gb each of the 2Gb sticks

It will crash and/or mess up the memory sticks themselves

My advice is to stick with the 2Gb.

Answer 2

You are limited to 2 GB because that is all that the hardware memory controller on the motherboard is capable of recognizing.  There is no point to installing 2 GB SODIMMs,  they'll probably crash the machine, but in any case they will not be recognized as 2 GB.

Nothing you can do about it other than buying a new machine.  

Answer 3

1.  It is possible it would not even boot up.  The power would come up, but nothing else.

2.  It may damage the motherboard.

3.  Depending on your Operating System, even it it did boot up and read the 4 GB, if your OS does not support it, it would be useless.

So basically either way you would be spending money for RAM that you would never use.