Will more than 8 GB of RAM work on ASUS P5E3 Premium?

There seems to be some anecdotal evidence here and here that I could put more than 8 GB of RAM (say, 16 GB) into the 4 slots on the ASUS P5E3 Premium motherboard.

Can anyone confirm whether or not this will work?

I currently have 2 x PC3-10666 PN OCZ3G133334GK memory modules, so 4 GB of RAM and two free slots. Could I add 2 x 4 GB and end up with 12 GB? The overclocking settings on the board would allow me to adjust voltage etc., I think, but I have zero experience with overclocking.

codecowboy

Posted 2014-04-12T10:34:23.027

Reputation: 465

If you already have two separate sources confirming that 16 GB of RAM is recognised and works, what else exactly are you looking for? – Indrek – 2014-04-12T11:02:38.260

A technical explanation based on detailed hardware knowledge of why it will / won't work rather than 'i chucked some ram in and it seemed to work' – codecowboy – 2014-04-12T11:30:34.650

Answers

This motherboard is built (see chipset) on the Intel x48 chipset, which has a max of 8GB.

William Hilsum

Posted 2014-04-12T10:34:23.027

Reputation: 111 572

for anyone interested, it didn't work and I wasted my money. – codecowboy – 2015-05-12T11:31:00.087

The max RAM given in official specs is often not any sort of absolute limit, but simply the maximum amount that the manufacturer was able (or bothered) to test with. If people have confirmed being able to put 16 GB of RAM into this board and use it all, there's no reason to believe the OP wouldn't be able to do the same. – Indrek – 2014-04-12T11:06:07.623

This is the chipset vendor, not the motherboard manufacturer stating this. I have personally done this before, but, there can be stability problems and it just isn't worth in the long run going outside of the supported maximums. – William Hilsum – 2014-04-12T11:15:43.230

1It doesn't matter who claims the maximum RAM limit (motherboard manufacturers usually just repeat whatever the chipset mfgr says anyway, unless they impose additional limits of their own). There are Intel chipsets from the Core 2 era that aren't supposed to support more than 4 GB of RAM, yet run fine with 8 GB. Stability problems can be tested for with an overnight run of Memtest86 or similar. Really, the only concern is making sure to have a good return policy on the RAM, in case it really doesn't work properly. But of course, it's up to the OP to decide if he wants to take that chance. – Indrek – 2014-04-12T12:03:28.813

1+1 because this is the answer the question is looking for, "A technical explanation based on detailed hardware knowledge of why it will / won't work" regardless of this debate being relevant. – Raystafarian – 2014-04-12T12:15:04.723

-1

Just upgraded. I first bougt one 4GB module for test and it was ok. Now I have 16GB on my P5E3 Pro :happy:

CPU: Q9550, Mem: Goodram GR1600D364L11/4G

The point is that ram must be dual channel - two sided modules with 256MB per chip.

puna

Posted 2014-04-12T10:34:23.027

Reputation: 1