Lenovo T520 Maximum Memory: Not 8, But 16 GB!

  • Hardware
  • Published Dec 6, 2012 Updated Dec 5, 2012

Contrary to what Lenovo wants to make you believe, the T520 laptop is not limited to 8 GB of RAM. I own this reliable workhorse and made the mistake of buying another laptop because I wanted something more elegant, but mainly because I need more than 8 GB of RAM. As it turned out, the other machine was not as business-proof as I thought.

Since I had bought an 8 GB module for the other machine I decided to try it in the T520 - it worked instantly and flawlessly with 12 GB in total. That gave me confidence to order a second 8 GB module and replace the remaining 4 GB SO-DIMM with it. Now my T520 is at 16 GB of RAM, twice the amount Lenovo’s specifications state as the maximum.

Noble-Workhorse-vs.-Showy-Interloper by Mike Knell under CC

If you own the T520 and want to extend your machine’s life: spend 80 € for two 8 GB SO-DIMMs and upgrade to 16 GB. If you want to go a little bit further, replace the hard disk drive with an SSD. I can recommend the Plextor M3 Pro and the Samsung SSD 840 Pro (I own the Plextor since the Samsung was not yet available).

I did both, upgraded the RAM and replaced the HDD with an SDD, and the laptop’s new power nearly scares me. Working with virtual machines now is actually fun - it definitely was not, before.

For the record: the SO-DIMM model I used is the Kingston M1G64J90 (8 GB DDR3-1333).

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