Mixing Ram Speeds from the same manufacturer

[BreadInCaptivity]

 

 

 

So I have a single 8GB stick of ram from Crucial. It's the Ballistix sport(white one). It's specs are 2400 MHz at 1.2v 16-16-16. I want to upgrade my system by adding another stick ram but here in China, they don't have the exact same model but a similar one at 2666mhz 16-18-18 at 1.2v. My question is whether I can install this stick of ram and expect it to work normally in my pc with the existing ram(dual channel and all) or do I have to underclock/overclock my ram.

 

My ram: https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/bls8g4d240fsc

 

The new stick: https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/bls8g4d26bfsc

 

My computer's specs:

Asrock AB350 Pro4

Ryzen 5 1400

GTX 1050ti(will be upgraded to a RX570 or RX580)

550w PSU

 

Any help appreciated.

 

[MysticalRainXIV]

As far as I'm aware, mixing different ram clock speeds isnt that big of a deal, but the timings do have to match, and since one stick is 16-16-16, and the other is 16-18-18, you should not mix the sticks, unless you could possibly change the timings on one of the sticks to match the other. Its definitely overall not recommended, and can definitely cause some headaches. Your best bet is to just get two new matching sticks.

[Ykcud]

There is a chance that due to the timings that the two modules will not want to work together in your motherboard. Also, I am not able to find the ranking of those modules either on Crucial's website so it is possible that one may be dual ranked and one might be single ranked which could cause some issues as well with them working together, though they both appear to be the same by appearance. That being said, mixing memory that is not compatible with one another in the same board will not damage it or the memory and you would just need to remove one of those modules and it will work fine after that.

 

I do want to note that with DDR4 that more often than not the memory will work with one another, but the above is still worth noting.

Now, if the two modules do work with one another, your computer will clock down the faster memory to the slower speed (2400 MT/s). This is of course baring overclocking.

[schwellmo92]

You can mix RAM with different frequency and timings it'll just run at the slower frequency/timings.

[BreadInCaptivity]

19 hours ago, MysticalRainXIV said:

As far as I'm aware, mixing different ram clock speeds isnt that big of a deal, but the timings do have to match, and since one stick is 16-16-16, and the other is 16-18-18, you should not mix the sticks, unless you could possibly change the timings on one of the sticks to match the other. Its definitely overall not recommended, and can definitely cause some headaches. Your best bet is to just get two new matching sticks.

If, for instance, it's possible to change the timings, how would I do it, and would it affect performance?

 

Also, it can't be too much of a headache if the ram modules are basically the same, just with different speeds and timings. I could overclock the old ram and change the timings right?

 

Thanks in advance.

[BreadInCaptivity]

18 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

You can mix RAM with different frequency and timings it'll just run at the slower frequency/timings.

So no overclocking the old ram to match the speeds?

 

Thanks in advance.

[BreadInCaptivity]

19 hours ago, Ykcud said:

There is a chance that due to the timings that the two modules will not want to work together in your motherboard. Also, I am not able to find the ranking of those modules either on Crucial's website so it is possible that one may be dual ranked and one might be single ranked which could cause some issues as well with them working together, though they both appear to be the same by appearance. That being said, mixing memory that is not compatible with one another in the same board will not damage it or the memory and you would just need to remove one of those modules and it will work fine after that.

 

I do want to note that with DDR4 that more often than not the memory will work with one another, but the above is still worth noting.

Now, if the two modules do work with one another, your computer will clock down the faster memory to the slower speed (2400 MT/s). This is of course baring overclocking.

But can't I just overclock the old ram to match the speeds and timings of the new ram? They're basically the same sticks anyways.

 

Thanks in advance.

[BHJohnson]

The sticks are going to initially run at a slower speed and looser timings. They'll be running at the same speed, because it's not physically possible for different sticks to run at different speeds and timings on the same board. You can go into your BIOS and set the memory timings and speeds manually. I personally would set them to the slower of the two sticks and see if they run. Since you can't set individual sticks, you'll be setting both of them at once and they'll run at the same speed. It's a pretty normal thing to have to do anyways even with sticks that are sold together in a kit because they often boot up initially with slower timings than advertised.

 

Once you do that, it's overclocking memory as normal. You'll probably be limited by the slower of your two sticks, but that's not much different than how it normally works. Be sure you know how to reset CMOS and do some homework before you attempt that. But you should be stable up to the slower of the two sticks' clocks.

[schwellmo92]

6 hours ago, BreadInCaptivity said:

So no overclocking the old ram to match the speeds?

 

Thanks in advance.

Ah yeah you can do that, sorry I thought you had a laptop.