Hey, y’all. Just upgraded the RAM in my FW16 from 32 to 96. I figured I’d probably need it eventually, and saw the Crucial CT2K48G56C46S5 for a decent price.
When I check the system details in Windows 11 Pro, it shows that only 91.8 GB is usable. Is that normal?
Additionally, I don’t think it had to do any RAM training upon first boot after the upgrade. It booted right into W11 in less than a minute. Is that normal? From reading all the other posts, I thought it’d take awhile after the first boot.
That doesn’t include various amounts that are reserved.
For example there is some ram (2 GB default on systems with ≥64 GB ram, 4 GB with game mode on) that is reserved exclusively for the iGPU, which isn’t counted in that number (although the iGPU can access a lot more ram than just what is reserved for it, the reserved amount is just for improving compatibility with certain things).
Then there are usually a couple hundred megabytes reserved for reasons other than the iGPU.
Overall 91.8 GB seems around where I’d expect (a little high actually, I would’ve expected 91.6-91.7 GB) if you have game optimized mode on (which IMO is a terrible name barely related to what that feature does). If you have game optimized mode off it seems a bit low, but not necessarily out of the ordinary.
That is normal.
Memory training usually takes under 30 seconds, even with large amounts like 96 GB. However with DDR5 it has become a lot more common to see outliers that take as long as 20 minutes. Those outliers are still rare, but since it is such a long time you see people post online when it does happen.
“Framework Laptop 16 supports two slots of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory at the recommended native DDR5-5600 speed, with a maximum capacity of up to 32 GB. While memory that meets that standard should work, the memory we sell in the Framework Marketplace is tested for compatibility. We recommend avoiding XMP DDR5.”
TLDR: 96 GB (2x 48 GB) unofficially with current ram modules, 64 GB (2x 32 GB) officially with current ram modules, 256 GB (2x 128 GB) officially with a theoretical future ram module.
The CPU officially supports up to 2x 128 GB modules for 256 GB total.
However 128 GB modules don’t yet exist. The largest modules that do exist are 48 GB for 96 GB total.
However the CPU officially only supports modules that have capacites that are powers of two. 48 GB is not a power of two, which means the largest modules that currently exist and are officially supported are 32 GB each for a total of 64 GB.
In practice however 48 GB modules do work fine and many users do use them.
The quote you’re mentioning is probably referring to the maximum that you can put in each slot if you stick with modules that are officially supported and currently available.
The new Ultra series that Framework announced for the 13 supports 96gb officially. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the specs for the 16 see a change there.
I saw this information in the video Nirav did where he was going over all of the updates related to the latest framework 13 release.