Having enough RAM on a laptop is critical. It will mean the difference between having a power-house machine or a regular laptop. These days, most manufacturers seem to top off the memory on their laptops at a mere 8 GB. However, fortunately for us, while they ship most laptops with 4 to 8 GB of RAM, most laptops do allow for the user to perform a RAM upgrade on his own without any kind of technical knowledge required.
Such is the case with the Dell Inspiron 15 3511. One of Dell's most successful laptop lineups. And today we're going to teach you step-by-step how to upgrade the RAM on the Dell Inspiron 15 3511.
Dell Inspiron 15 3511 RAM Installation Tutorial
What type of RAM do I need to use? How much RAM can I install?
Before you place your laptop upside-down and start opening it up you're going to need to know the type of RAM you need to buy in order to perform the upgrade. In this particular case, you're going to need a DDR4 3200MHz SO-DIMM memory type. That's a DDR4 RAM module clocking at 3200 MHz with a SO-DIMM form factor.
As far as the amount of memory supported on the Dell Inspiron 15 3511, you can place up to 64 GB, 32 GB on each of its two available slots. Having said that, we'd be hard-pressed to find a real-life situation where you would ever need or make use of so much RAM.
In all honesty, 16 GB should be more than enough for most intensive users. In that case, you're going to need to make use of two compatible 8 GB modules of RAM.
However, if you're really looking to use your laptop for very RAM-intensive tasks such as professional 4K video editing and the likes you could benefit from upgrading to 32 GB through two compatible 16 GB modules but again, this is only something we'd recommend to someone that already knows he/she is going to be using ridiculous amounts of RAM.
Should I remove the onboard RAM?
We get asked this question quite a bit. In all honesty, it's not 100% necessary for you to remove the onboard RAM when performing a RAM upgrade. However, it is recommended since that way you can make sure that both RAM sticks are identical and therefore the RAM is working in dual-band. Whenever we perform an upgrade we switch out the onboard RAM to make sure the RAM upgrade works out as planned but that's going to be a personal decision.
How to Upgrade the RAM on the Dell Inspiron 15 3511?
To perform the installation you're going to need a screwdriver, a tool to pry open the laptop that's plastic such as a guitar pick or a thick card and we would
recommend getting anti-static gloves but this is optional as you don't generally get much static when doing RAM upgraded, that's more common when swapping other components.
Step 1: In any case, the first thing you're going to do is make sure that the laptop is completely turned off and disconnected from the power supply. Once that's done you need to place the laptop upside down and remove the lower screws and the side screws first. We recommend doing that first since the top screws also act as a sort of lever as you can see in the picture below:
Step 2: Now you're going to use your prying tool to gently open up the case of the laptop like so:
Step 3: Now that you've managed to remove the lower case, you're going to see the internals of the laptop where you'll quickly notice the RAM slots.
One slot with the onboard RAM and another one that's empty. It should be pointed out that at this stage you could also opt to unplug the battery from the circuits. This isn't strictly necessary but you can do so if you wish to.
Step 4: Now all you need to do is remove the onboard RAM if you're going to use two new memory units as recommended and insert the new modules. To remove the onboard RAM all you're going to do is pull in an outward fashion on the levers/clutches located sides of the RAM slot.
This will release the memory at a 45-degree angle. Now remove the RAM module and insert your new RAM module in there at a 45-degree angle making sure both the notch on the memory and the notch on the slot align well like so:
This image will illustrate better how the RAM should enter, though it's (clearly) from a different computer and only for illustrative purposes.
Step 5: Once the RAM has been placed at a 45-degree angle, insert it and press down until you hear the clicking sound of the levers latching onto the RAM module. If you've disconnected the battery now is when you would connect it again.
After that, you want to place the case back on the chassis and turn the laptop back on. You should see a message pop up that states that the RAM has changed on your laptop but in the event that you don't you can check that it's been done under "Device Specifications". And that's all. You've triumphantly installed more memory on the Dell Inspiron 15 3511. Congratulations!
