The ThinkPad T16 Gen 4 AMD Accepts 96 GB of RAM

Today my new ThinkPad T16 Gen 4 AMD arrived. This is an upgrade from my ThinkPad P52s that I've been using since 2018. I've been hemming and hawing over which laptop to buy and thought I had it narrowed down to either a System 76 Darter Pro 16" or a Framework 16. I wasn't completely happy with either option. The Darter Pro only offers Intel processors and I wanted to go with AMD. The Framework 16 (at least until the updated model that was announced this week) ships with a charger that isn't powerful enough to keep the laptop charged when running full tilt. I had written ThinkPads off because Lenovo moved to soldered RAM some years back and I refuse to buy a computer with soldered RAM (that's part of the reason I left Apple's ecosystem). For shits and giggles I took at a look at the current ThinkPad line up and was happy to see that socketed RAM is back, baby!

If you look at the tech specs for the T16, it can be configured with up to 32 GB of RAM. That's a paltry amount consider that's what I put in my seven-year-old P52s. The spec sheet lists a maximum of 64 GB, which is a more respectable amount. However, if you're not familiar with the ThinkPad line up, it's common that some T-series have corresponding P-series models. My P52s is a good example. It's a T580 with a discrete Nvidia GPU. The T16's corresponding P-series model is the P16s. If you look at the tech specs for the P16s, you'll notice it can accept up to 96 GB of RAM. Knowing that the T16 and P16s were the same hardware, I opted to order 96 GB of memory from Amazon. I installed it when the laptop arrive (the T16, like previous T-series, is very easy to work on) and it works perfectly.

There you have it. If you end up buying a T16 Gen 4 AMD (I don't know if this is the same for the Intel model), you can stick up to 96 GB of RAM in it despite what the spec sheet says. As an aside, never buy RAM from Lenovo. They, like every manufacturer, charge an absurd amount. The 96 GB upgrade for the P16s is $599.00. I bought 96 GB of Crucial RAM from Amazon for $213.95.