Whats going on guys....I recently picked up a Dell Inspiron 17R 5720 w/ an i5 3210M and was wondering if anyone can help me find compatible ram.

I was thinking of picking up the Ballistix 8GB (2X4GB) DDR3L-1600 PC3L-12900 CL9 to meet the max requirments but how do I know what Cas Latency to grab? Can a machine only take a certain latency or can I go with the lowest I can find?

Any insight would be great

Thanks

The cas latency that you have listed will be faster.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29...-latency-speed

I wouldn't go any lower than what the current RAM cas latency already is.

I think the lower the cl the easier it is on the memory controller.

After reading this it looks like lower numbers are better.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/...her-worse.html

http://www.newegg.com/Laptop-Memory/SubCategory/ID-381

Happy RAM shopping.

My experience with Dell business class machines over the years suggests:
1-Don't bother trying to use the best available CAS unless it costs less. Excess over average is wasted.
2-Don't mix RAM sticks that don't have matching CAS. Sometimes mixing will work if the slower RAM is in the #1 slot, or with 4 sticks, with the slower in the #1/#3 slot pair.

New laptop so Ive been trying to read up and even tried a couple memory finders but everyone seems to say something different lol so its kind of driving me crazy...When I read my computer specs, they say to go with the DDR3-1600 but when I go to crucial or new egg they say I can use an DDR3-1866?

I was going to just stick with the DDR3-1600 to play it safe, plus its already running a DDR3-1600 stick in it. The dude I bought it off of ran the max 8GB on one slot for some reason so I want to just buy a pair to utilize the dual channel. Not sure what CL to pick up tho because I heard that the computer might not post if u have it to low. Just dont want to waste money on something for it not to even workout

1866 is a speed limit. In a machine that supports only up to 1600, 1866 will run at 1600. Whether it will perform better, worse or equal than the existing stick can only be definitively determined via testing. Whatever the difference between mismatched sticks is would be imperceptible in normal operation, discoverable only via a RAM testing program. However switching from single channel to dual by bringing stick count from one to two should always produce an obvious performance improvement.

My guess is most using single sticks either don't have a clue about the significance of dual channel, or are working with a machine someone without a clue configured (e.g., phone sales at Tiger Direct).

Newegg has always been good to me when I've made an incompatible RAM purchase and need to return it for something else.