Upgrading Memory on a Macbook Pro OSX with the GeIL 16GB Memory Kit (GS316GB1333C9DC)

I recently purchased the “GeIL 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10660) Laptop Memory (GS316GB1333C9DC)” from NewEgg on boxing day in hopes that it would work in my Macbook Pro (Early 2011 15″ – MC721LL/A – MacBookPro8,2 – A1286 – 2353-1*)

And to my surprise after installing the memory my Macbook Pro booted and actually posted to OSX 10.8.2, here is a screenshot of the “About This Mac” and “System Report” sections showing that 16GB of memory is installed.

Even thought I could boot into OSX, I still needed to confirm that everything was stable. There is a program called memtest by Command-Tab that will allow you to test the memory extensively. The best way to test is through Single User Mode to ensure that you test all memory and with minimal running in the background. If you run memtest via terminal when OSX is booted, then you will only be able to test available memory. I’ve provided a screenshot of memtest running from OSX via terminal, and you can see that it only detects 12GB of memory. This is because the rest has been used and can’t be tested.