How much RAM can I fit into my old motherboard?

[TheSaltyPug]

Hello all -- I have decided to upgrade my ram, and I don't yet want/need to upgrade my motherboard yet.

The motherboard is from an Dell Inspiron 3847, which came (and is currently using) two 6 GB sticks. Everything I have found says that it is expandable to 16 GB, which I assume is two 8 GB sticks.

I like RAM. As a gamer, I kinda want more. My plan was to have two 12 GB or two 16 GB sticks, to effectively make 24 or 32 GB or RAM. I'm holding off on buying it though because I'm not really sure what "expandable to 16" means. Does that mean that the sticks cannot exceed 16, or total cannot exceed 16? Would I be able to put 12 or 16 GB sticks into the motherboard?

From the specifications PDF ( http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_inspiron_desktop/inspiron-3847-desktop_reference%20guide_en-us.pdf ), I can see it says the following:

Two internally-accessible DDR3 DIMM sockets
DDR3, 1600 MHz
Configurations supported: 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 12 GB, and 16 GB [strike][/strike]

Thanks in advanced!

 

[camieabz]

Max RAM in the motherboard is 16GB (2x8).

 

[Karadjgne]

Most games won't use more than 8Gb of system ram. For those that do, you'd be very hard pressed to find a game using more than @12Gb in 4k with sli gpus.

2 amounts of ram are recommended, either 8Gb (2x4Gb kit) or 16Gb (2x8Gb kit) as minimum and maximum to take dual channel use into consideration. Rarely you'll see 4x4Gb kits. You might see 4x8Gb kits on a 2011 enthusiast build, but that's mostly for RGB purposes not actual game performance.

Best bet is 2x8Gb. And that's the motherboard supported maximum.

I've never seem a 6Gb ram stick, normal load outs would be a 4Gb or 8Gb standard stick with option for a 8Gb or 4Gb additional stick to make the 12Gb.