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64GB memory on the Intel NUCs?

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I just got my hands on a pair of 32GB SODIMM memory modules (64GB total) which I had been waiting to evaluate since last Fall. Apparently, it has taken some time for these high capacity memory modules to be readily available in the consumer market. Even after the announcement of the new 2018 Apple Mac Mini last year, which officially supports 32GB SODIMMS, I was not aware of any vendors who were selling these modules direct to consumers.


My primary interests in these memory modules was whether they would work on the latest Intel NUCs, specifically the Hades Canyon (NUC8i7HNK) which are the prosumer versions of the standard Intel NUCs that many folks use for vSphere Home Labs. Both the standard and Skull/Hades Canyon NUCs all officially support a maximum of 32GB of memory (2x16GB SODIMM), however it been hypothesized by the community that they *should* in theory be able to go up to 64GB, especially as some of the newer CPUs technically state support for it.

UPDATE (10/30/20) - Thanks to Ariel Sanchez who shared the Crucial 2x32GB SO-DIMM also work with the Intel NUC. It was a killer deal during Amazon Prime week, at $164 for 2x32 (64GB) but as of right now, they are going for $219 which is still cheaper than the Samsung which are going for $120 per 32GB SO-DIMM.

With the lack of 32GB SODIMM availability and the cost, there has not been anyone that I am aware of that has confirmed whether the Intel NUCs can see the full 64GB of memory and more importantly, does ESXi also see the full memory capacity? With help from MITXPC on providing the evaluation units, I can finally answer this question which I actually shared on Twitter earlier this afternoon 🙂

Here are some screenshots of ESXi 6.5 Update 2 running on the Hades Canyon NUC with the 64GB memory modules:


I figured that if this would work, the Hades Canyon had the best chance as it was the latest generation of the Intel NUCs. What came next was a complete and unexpected surprise and hence the tweet. I still own and frequently use my Intel 6th Gen NUC (NUC6i3SYH), which was actually my first experience with the NUCs. I was curious if the memory modules would even be detected with such an old NUC, especially given this platform had already been discontinued.

UPDATE (04/20/19) - Here are additional testimonials from folks in the community who have also verified 64GB memory support with their respective NUCs.

  • Intel 6th Gen NUC - Me! (see section below)
  • Intel 7th Gen NUC - Fellow colleague Christian Loerner has shared he's had success and here
  • Intel 8th Gen NUC - See here, here, here, here
  • Intel Skull Canyon NUC - See here, here
  • Intel Hades Canyon NUC - Me! (see section above), See here

As you can see from the screenshots below, my old 6th Gen Intel NUC (purchased in 2016) recognized all 64GB memory running the latest ESXi 6.7 Update 1 release! This means anyone with at least a 6th Gen Intel NUC or newer can definitely benefit from these new 32GB SODIMM modules. From a setup standpoint, there was nothing special I needed to do. The Hades Canyon was running a fairly new BIOS but my old NUC was running a pretty old version 044 vs. 068 and it did not have any issues. Once I confirmed that it successfully posted, I ended up flashing the BIOS to the latest version which you can find on Intel's website and its a good practice, especially if you have taken the downtime.


This is a pretty freaking amazing if you think about the tiny footprint of a classic Intel NUC and combining that with M.2 NVMe for storage and now the ability to go up to 64GB of memory! Best of all, you can have these benefits today without having to purchase a brand new system, which many assumed would be required if/when Intel officially supports 64GB for their NUC platform.

For the few still in doubt, yes I can actually consume all the available memory. I was able to deploy 17 x Windows 10 VMs, each configured with 1 vCPU and 4GB of memory to demonstrate memory overcommit as not all memory is active. Obviously, there will be some amount of memory that will not be consumable, for example if you are using vSAN, ESXi will require a portion of the memory to run the service. This is no different than any other system you are managing today 🙂


In addition, a number of you have also asked if you *could* mix a 16GB and 32GB module, not recommended for obvious reasons, but it looks like the system will also recognize that configuration for those wanting to iteratively update their existing Intel NUCs.

Finally, I am sure folks are wondering about what this will cost them. Currently, on Amazon a single Samsung DDR4 32GB SODIMM is going for $298. Interestingly, I also recently came across a Slickdeal (one of my favorite sites to visit) and they have this exact module for just $213! For a little over $1K USD, you can have a pretty nice vSphere/vSAN/NSX Home Lab kit that can run next to you with very little no noise at all.

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Comments

  1. Great news, trank you for testing! Any idea if it will work on a Bean Canyon Nuc (i.e. Nuc8i5beh), too?

    Reply

    • He said "anyone with at least a 6th Gen Intel NUC or newer can definitely benefit". You have an 8th gen.

      Reply

  4. Thanks for the great test. Whats with temperature of the NuC?
    I would definatly go for 64 gb, but Im wondering, why Intel dont official supprt 64 gb, what are the unknwn negative sideeffects?
    Does anyone will made some 24/7 tests and repot back in a few days?

    Reply

  5. On a German memory shop, the spec for the system is written with 64 gb ram:
    https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.speicher.de%2Farbeitsspeicher-16gb-ddr4-intel-nuc-kit-nuc8i7hnk2-ram-so-dimm-sp282859.html

    The RAM of the Intel can be expanded to a maximum of 64GB . * 2 memory sockets are available for this purpose.

    One question: must be both memory sockets setup with the same size, or are 16 gb + 32 (total 48 gb) supported, so that the upgrade can be done in steps?

    Reply

    • May or may not work. The benefit of using the same size memory DIMM or SO-DIMM is that you get better performance because of memory interleaving.

      Reply

  7. This is a great share. I just upgraded my 3 NUCs with 64GB after reading this last week. Thanks for the great work you do.

    Reply

  8. Thank you so much for testing this and sharing your results! I was wondering once they were generally available if they would work in the Hades Canyon NUC, and now I know.

    Reply

  9. William , thank you very much. This was the info, I´m locking for a long time.
    Now our ESXi Server with 64Gb(mandatory) is set.
    Kind regards Pascal

    Reply

  10. Great stuff William! good surprise for sure 🙂

    @all
    Has anyone tested these with NUC 7i7DNHE? In theory they should be working.
    Only glitch would be these are 2666 MHz and NUC officially support 1866, 2133 and 2400 MHz. So these will not run at full speed but at 2400 max. Still an impressive 64GB of "space" to use. Very tempted to buy them for my NUCs, 8 of them now..

    Reply

  11. I've upgraded my Hades Canyon NUC HVK to 64GB ram. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing stability issues with apps like Adobe Photoshop. I work with 3-4 GB psb files... Swapped back to 32GB of Corsair 2666MHz and no issues. I do overclock my NUC though so I was wondering if anyone has had any issues?

    Reply

  12. NUC6i5SYH with latest GK0066 BIOS. Works! Memory is Samsung 32GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM Memory Module for Laptop Computers (260 Pin SODIMM, 1.2V) M471A4G43MB1. Setting up a new NUC8i7BEH with the same memory next week.

    Reply

  13. Thanks for the tip! The prices have gone down quite a bit, at the moment I see these modules at around $170.

    Reply

    • bought two samsung 32gb for $148ea yesterday for a new primeday nuk8i7HVK, big price drop since this was posted

      Reply

  15. Confirming the Samsung 32GB works,and with latest BiOS (July 2019), the NUC automatically supported 2666 speed

    Reply

  16. confirming Shuttle DV310v2 i5-9400 is working as an esxi hypervisor with samsung dual 32gb = total of 64gb ram
    also nuc6i7kyk, nu8i5beh, nuc6i5syk

    Reply

    • hi, can you post the full name of that 2x 32 gb ram? I want to buy a pair on cyber monday along with a new NUC6i7KYK. Thanks !

      Reply

  18. @Michele: did you test that actually? I'm thinking of upgrading mine to 64GB

    Greets

    Reply

  19. @Michele: did you test that actually (upgrading the NUC7i7DNHE to 64GB)? I'm thinking of upgrading mine to 64GB

    Greets

    Reply

    • Karl,

      I installed the Samsung 32GB DIMMs in my three NUC7i7DNHE and they work great!!

      Cheers and good luck!

      BC

      Reply

  21. So what would be cool is to have 2 to 3 Intel Nucs and then some storage racks running ceph https://ceph.io/
    you don't need a raid controller as ceph does it all for you. you can drop this in to a data center and be very low power and have a good about of VM's with lots of storage. Build your own private cloud If you don't do Vmware you can use Proxmox also it integrates well with ceph. R-

    Reply

  22. Hello all, NUC7i5BNH user here.

    I bought instead HyperX HX426S16IB/32 as I couldn't find that Samsung RAM in our stores and don't feel like buying from ebay. Still pretty cheap at ~150€ a piece, 1-2yrs ago I had to buy 16GB for same price!

    Running BIOS BNKBL357.86A.0080.2019.0725.1139, after 2-3 30sec blank screen and reboots (memory retraining probably), I can get into BIOS and see it detected properly, also works fine in Lubuntu and Xenserver which I run primarily.

    I let memtest run on bare metal only for few minutes at most, but no issues going through whole range. I let it run in VM though, on 44Gigs for 20hours and no issues also.
    Also I tried 1x32GB, 1x32GB+1x16GB (Crucial CT16G4SFD8213.M16FA) and all were ok.
    imgur.com/mvQ1irN

    Couldn't set XMP-2666 but no big deal.
    Took the risk, was worth it for me. Hope this helps someone.

    Reply

    • Replying to my own comment. Besides small maintenance I had in beginning, 280 days uptime currently on my NUC, all was running fine the whole time.

      Reply

  23. Does this mean you got 2 * HyperX HX426S16IB/32 to work without any issues since your post also mentions “after 2-3 30sec blank screen and reboots“ which I read as the RAM was causing reboots?

    Reply

  24. Hi Gurus,

    I have a "NUC8I7BEH4 Gen8 i7-8559U Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.50 GHz)" . Currently I have 2*16 GB Corsiar RAM, however after reading the Blog i am planning to buy " 2 * Samsung 32GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM Memory (260 Pin SODIMM, 1.2V) M471A4G43MB1".

    Can anyone confirm that it will work on the above mentioned NUC. I am running ESXi 6.5 and planning to upgrade to ESXi6.7. It is matter of 500$. So Just need a confirmation before buying the items.

    Thanks

    Anjan

    Reply

  25. Has anyone tried 32GB DIMMs in a Dell Optiplex Micro 7050? Mine is running an i7-6700T and I'd love to put 64GB of RAM in it.

    Reply

    • Thanks to some Amazon warehouse deals I went ahead and bought 2 of the Samsung 32GB DIMMs William specified above -- they work great in the Optiplex 7050 micro with an i7-6700T under ESXi 7.
      William, thanks for these types of articles!

      Reply

  26. Hello, just wanted to add here that I purchased an HP Elitedesk 800 G2 for use as my homelab server. It came with 32 GB of RAM, which was listed as the max, but I'm happy to report that I just installed 64 GB and it's up and running with all the RAM available!

    Reply

  27. I run Cruical Scanner(downloaded from Micron's web site:https://bityl.co/3fsB) to check my Intel NUC8i7HVK for RAM upgrade, but Crucial 32GB DDR4-2666 SODIMM(CT32G4SFD8266) dose not display in the upgrade option. Besides, local retail shop told me that 32GB RAM module is good for the 9th generation Intel CPU or newer. Does anyone install Crucial 32GB DDR4-2666 SODIMM on Intel NUC8i7HVK?

    Reply

    • I've bought Micron Crucial 32GB DDR4-2666 SODIMM(CT32G4SFD8266) and tested on NUC8i7HVK without any issue, although this 32GB memory component is not listed on compatibility of NUC8i7HVK by INTEL or Micron official website.

      Reply

  28. Thank you for this article.
    Just bought a NUC8i5BEK, tried to put a 32GB in a single slot (to upgrade to 64GB when needed)
    The Samsung modules are quite expensive here, so I tried two cheapest modules :
    - HyperX HX424S14IB 32GB (in 2933Mhz which was the cheapest) : It didn't work. It might the module being faulty, but I preferred to send it back. Blue LED is slowly blinking 3 times, top or bottom slot.
    - "Viper Gaming" (Patriot) 32GB, 2666MHz. Same price (~110€) but it's working ! (At least it's booting)

    Reply

      • I can confirm that the Crucial CT32G4SFD8266 module of 32 GB RAM memory (DDR4, 2666 MT/s, SODIMM, 260-Pin, 1.2V, CL19) is well detected by the NUC6i3SHY with its latest SYSKLi35.86A BIOS.

        Just 100,27 €, instead of 162,40 € for the Samsung 32 GB module (M471A4G43MB1-CTD). Both prices got from Amazon.

        Thank you very much for sharing!!!

        Reply

    • Same issue. Patriot Viper Steel Series DDR4 32GB 2400MHz (PC4-19200) CL15 SODIMM Single Module PC Memory - PVS432G240C5S

      Reply

  29. I tried 2x32GB (M471A4G43MB1-CTD) on NUC7i3BNH but it doesn't work, i have 3 times blue flash appairing on power button, can you please help me ?

    Reply

  30. I have been running 64GB of RAM in 7i5BNK NUCs for a couple of years as Windows servers; Hyper-V role on the NUC and then multiple VMs as domain controllers, RDS servers, SQL servers in production for small clients. I typically run a second duplicate NUC as a replica and have had nothing but good performance and success with this configuration.

    Reply

  31. Also, I mostly use the H / tall model NUC with a second 2.5" SSD for VHD files or internal backup. Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe for the system drive and VMs. Variety of size combinations of NVME & 2.5 SSD to match the needs of the client. I always use Crucial RAM. The performance of the server is excellent and has been 100% reliable in half a dozen customer sites over the last 3+ years.

    Reply

  33. NUC NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) 2 x Crucial CT32G4SFD832A DDR4-3200 CL22 32GB SODIMM
    Runs perfectly well, plug n play, no issues

    Reply

  34. FWIW,

    I've got 64GB working in a Hades Canyon (NUC8i7HVK) running Windows 10 Pro.

    I'm now able to startup a half dozen VMs without hitting OOM issues.

    Went with Mushkin Redline sodimms (MRA4S266GHHF32GX2, 1.2V, DDR4/2666MHz) per feedback from some friends; total cost was (USD) ~$300 (incl tax).

    Reply

  35. Hello all,

    Thanks for this good article.

    Is there a difference in performances between 2x16GB SODIMM and 1x32GB SODIMM ?

    I would like to build an ESXi on NUC8i5BEH at home, and for now I only need 32GB, but maybe more in future. Buying 1x32GB would let me the possibility to do an upgrade to 64GB as the NUC8i5BEH has only 2 slots of RAM.

    Thanks in advance for your help ! 🙂

    Have a nice day

    Reply

  37. I'm using these in my NUC10i7FNH but my NUC8i5BEH does not like them.

    CMSX64GX4M2A2666C18

    Reply

  38. Has anyone tried it with the CT2K32G4SFD832A (Crucial 2x 32GB DDR4-3200) on a NUC6?
    I thought the 3200 would be backwards compatible, but my NUC6i5SYH does not boot with the RAM, nothing comes 🙁

    Is it possible that the 2400 works but the 3200 does not?

    Reply

  39. I was running for years NUC7i7BNH with 64gb of ram without problems...yesterday I update to firmware BN0092, and I got this errors at boot time:

    * (A7) Me FW Downgrade - Request MeSpiLock Failed
    * Error sending End of Post message to ME: HECI disabled, proceeding with boot!

    I tried the intel solutions:

    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000055659/intel-nuc.html

    But without luck, the error is still there. The system boot OK, but very slow BIOS load and post...anybody can help me? Thanks!

    Reply

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