Lenovo X120e with 16GB RAM?

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FM 3370

Gawd
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Jun 29, 2002
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I've had my Lenovo x120e for about a week not and really love it. I have a Samsung 830 256GB SSD drive coming in this week that I'll swap out for the 250GB 5400 rpm drive that's in there now so that should be sweet.

Question is will the X120e support 16GB ram unofficially? Also is there a point to using that much? I just want good solid performance and an upgrade I'll won't have to think about for a long time. It currently has 4GB, will definitely up it to 8 but if it will take 16 without penalty I'll definitely consider it. I guess I just want no limitations when it comes to max performance of this laptop.
 
I don't think any of the X120 models support anything past 8GB. You may want to check the chipset to be certain, though.
 
It's pretty pointless though to be honest. Even if you do a bad job at managing your memory 8 should be more than plenty.

Furthermore if you're not gaming on your laptop it probably won't ever get fully utilized, and even if you are, you probably still won't fully utilize all 8gb.
 
ahuang0284 said:
It's pretty pointless though to be honest. Even if you do a bad job at managing your memory 8 should be more than plenty.

Furthermore if you're not gaming on your laptop it probably won't ever get fully utilized, and even if you are, you probably still won't fully utilize all 8gb.
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You are wrong in a general sense that there are many applications which utilize large amounts of ram if given the opportunity. If you are planning on running a couple virtual machines in the background, 8 gig is not going to cut it. I have 16 on my desktop and it is barely enough. Also Matlab support guy told us that while compiling simulink simulation engines, although the process is CPU heavy, every bit of extra ram gives the program some breathing room and not to interact with the hardrive as often. Considering some of those simulations can take upwards of 2 hours to compile on a consumer grade I5 or an I7, and considering that the OP does not want to deal with ram for a while and wants to get future usability out of his laptop, he should get the 16 gig, if his motherboard supports it.
 
Andyk5 said:
You are wrong in a general sense that there are many applications which utilize large amounts of ram if given the opportunity. If you are planning on running a couple virtual machines in the background, 8 gig is not going to cut it. I have 16 on my desktop and it is barely enough. Also Matlab support guy told us that while compiling simulink simulation engines, although the process is CPU heavy, every bit of extra ram gives the program some breathing room and not to interact with the hardrive as often. Considering some of those simulations can take upwards of 2 hours to compile on a consumer grade I5 or an I7, and considering that the OP does not want to deal with ram for a while and wants to get future usability out of his laptop, he should get the 16 gig, if his motherboard supports it.
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The Thinkpad X120e line is a netbook. If he's running anything that requires workstation-like power, he's buying the wrong notebook.
 
FM 3370 said:
I've had my Lenovo x120e for about a week not and really love it. I have a Samsung 830 256GB SSD drive coming in this week that I'll swap out for the 250GB 5400 rpm drive that's in there now so that should be sweet.

Question is will the X120e support 16GB ram unofficially? Also is there a point to using that much? I just want good solid performance and an upgrade I'll won't have to think about for a long time. It currently has 4GB, will definitely up it to 8 but if it will take 16 without penalty I'll definitely consider it. I guess I just want no limitations when it comes to max performance of this laptop.
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As far as I am aware (officially) the chipset only supports 2 memory slots of speeds up to DR3-1333/PC3-10600 with a max of 4 GB per slot. The X120e manual probably says a max of 4 GB but that is 100% not true as I have a co worker with two 4 GB sticks.

However, it may be possible but for what reason? The CPU will definitely be the bottleneck for you and I would be surprised if you used more than 8 GB ever in that machine.
 
Thanks for all the responses. Interestingly enough this laptop has become faster than my desktop(see sig) and I'm kinda surprised at how well it performs. It might sound ridiculous but I want to play around with vmware and some other programs in the future as I study new applications. I was thinking although processing power might be slow, the increase memory will give "unlimited" room to play around with more advanced software.

If the X120e only supports 8GB then that seems fine. A guy I work with told me his workstations running vmware at home only have 8GB so after reading your replies and talking with him.....8GB seems enough...now it doesn't help that this guy also said he'd like to eventually move up to 16GB. :)
 
You're going to have a hell of a time trying to run any sort of virtualization on an E-series Bobcat processor.

If you're upgrading your RAM thinking that's the bottleneck, you're really only moving it back to the processor.
 
pelo said:
You're going to have a hell of a time trying to run any sort of virtualization on an E-series Bobcat processor.

If you're upgrading your RAM thinking that's the bottleneck, you're really only moving it back to the processor.
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I see what you mean. I think in conclusion I'll just go with 8. I'm most likely getting ahead of my self thinking about going to 16GB.
 
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