Who is running 32GB of RAM in their W520? Can you please post the brand and model # of the RAM being used?
I have tried RAM from Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, and Lenovo's own in-house (Samsung) supported 8GB modules in my W520. The W520 has problems booting up when the "Integrated Graphics" option is selected (and OS detection of Optimus is disabled). It boots fine in Dedicated Graphics and Optimus modes. I have the latest BIOS. The problem exists on Windows 7, Windows 8, and every flavor of Linux.
The problem is that as soon as the graphics sub-system is initialized in Windows or Linux, the CPU gets pegged to 100% usage, the system is extremely slow, and the CPU fans are running at full blast. I have tested the RAM and CPU in system from a different manufacturer and everything is fine. I believe either the BIOS has an issue (which would be supported by lots of people having this problem) or my specific motherboard is faulty. I want to see if I am the only one with this issue so any help would be appreciated.
This post is a continuation of a problem I wrote about in this thread: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W520-Intel-HD-3000-iGPU-broken/td-p/821371