Different RAM modules not working! Need knowledge on it!

[Abdur Rahman J]

Hey all, So i basically have a budget gaming PC and i have a 8GB DDR3 samsung RAM , i wanna upgrade the RAM so  i also have a DDR3 1666 Zion xtreme RAM 4GB laying around ( Pictures attached ) . The computer doesnt turn on, can anyone clarify why it doesnt turn on  when i install both? what are the ways to upgrade?

[Tan3l6]

Nooo - not 4GB and 8GB sticks.

Maybe  4GB and 4GB different specs DDR4

[Praesi]

Dont mix different RAM.

[Jurrunio]

Clear CMOS after installing them?

[MageTank]

9 minutes ago, Abdur Rahman J said:

Hey all, So i basically have a budget gaming PC and i have a 8GB DDR3 samsung RAM , i wanna upgrade the RAM so  i also have a DDR3 1666 Zion xtreme RAM 4GB laying around ( Pictures attached ) . The computer doesnt turn on, can anyone clarify why it doesnt turn on  when i install both? what are the ways to upgrade?

Okay, so there are a few things at play here. First of all, you are attempting to mix a 1.35v DDR3L 1866 C11 DIMM with a 1.5v DDR3 1600 C9 DIMM. The different capacities don't really matter at all, as your memory controller is likely capable of running Flex Channel Mode, but this difference in voltage, speed and primary timings is going to absolutely confuse your IMC. Since your 1.35V DIMM is technically faster from a bandwidth perspective (1866 vs 1600), your IMC might be trying to force it to run at 1600mhz like the other DIMM, but your 1600mhz DIMM also has tighter timings. In this configuration, I am not sure what comes out on top in training. You are also mixing a single rank DIMM with a dual rank DIMM, which adds another layer of complexity for the IMC to figure out in regards to specific tertiary timings and bank/rank interleaving.

 

To make these DIMM's compatible with each other, you'll have to do this manually. Dial in 1.5V VDIMM, manually set the clock speed to 1600mhz, dial in your primary timings at 9-9-9-27 and hope that your board trains your secondary and tertiary timings correctly. No guarantees that this will work out well, either.

 

Be prepared for a lot of trial and error as it may not work properly the first few times as you have to find a timing combination that works. If you want to avoid this headache, simply buy matching DIMM's. It will save you time, and likely perform better.

[mariushm]

Install one stick at a time.

Use CPU-Z or Aida64 to look at the SPD profiles in the memory sticks and write them down on a sheet of paper

Then pick a profile that's supported by both sticks or pick the closest profile and relax it to work with both sticks.

 

You have a DDR3L stick that most likely defaults to running at 1.35v and at PC12800 (1600 mhz) cl11 , and you have a ddr3 1866 stick that's probably 1866 Mhz and probably requires 1.65v to reach 1866 mhz.

You could probably get the 4gb stick to run at 1600 mhz with 1.5v  and then you more or less overvoltage the samsung stick by setting it at 1.5v

 

So best bet would be to install the samsung stick first, manually configure the voltage to 1.5v from 1.35v, maybe increase the timings to more than 11-11-whatever is by default

Then after restart, try inserting the other stick and hope it sticks to using the same timings and 1.5v

 

but most likely bios has a fit because you're mixing ddr3L (1.35v) and regular ddr3 which probably has 1.65v profiles (and some default jedec 1.5v profiles)

 

// yeah kinda like what @MageTank wrote, he was simply faster... and maybe i mixed the frequencies, or he did... doesn't matter, as long as you get the idea.

[Abdur Rahman J]

51 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Nooo - not 4GB and 8GB sticks.

Maybe  4GB and 4GB different specs DDR4

i cannot understand?

[Abdur Rahman J]

46 minutes ago, Praesi said:

Dont mix different RAM.

Can you explain why bro? im new to building PC so

[Praesi]

Just now, Abdur Rahman J said:

Can you explain why bro? im new to building PC so

It doesnt work. Thats all you should care about. Get exact the same DIMM and all will work fine.

[Abdur Rahman J]

42 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Clear CMOS after installing them?

Hey thanks for the reply, i will def give it a go..

[Abdur Rahman J]

41 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Okay, so there are a few things at play here. First of all, you are attempting to mix a 1.35v DDR3L 1866 C11 DIMM with a 1.5v DDR3 1600 C9 DIMM. The different capacities don't really matter at all, as your memory controller is likely capable of running Flex Channel Mode, but this difference in voltage, speed and primary timings is going to absolutely confuse your IMC. Since your 1.35V DIMM is technically faster from a bandwidth perspective (1866 vs 1600), your IMC might be trying to force it to run at 1600mhz like the other DIMM, but your 1600mhz DIMM also has tighter timings. In this configuration, I am not sure what comes out on top in training. You are also mixing a single rank DIMM with a dual rank DIMM, which adds another layer of complexity for the IMC to figure out in regards to specific tertiary timings and bank/rank interleaving.

 

To make these DIMM's compatible with each other, you'll have to do this manually. Dial in 1.5V VDIMM, manually set the clock speed to 1600mhz, dial in your primary timings at 9-9-9-27 and hope that your board trains your secondary and tertiary timings correctly. No guarantees that this will work out well, either.

 

Be prepared for a lot of trial and error as it may not work properly the first few times as you have to find a timing combination that works. If you want to avoid this headache, simply buy matching DIMM's. It will save you time, and likely perform better.

Hey, thanks for the reply man! First of all, i should set everything manually in the bios to 1600mhz and 1.5v right? shoulf i change the primary timings too? ill give it a shot and update you on the same ASAP! 

[Abdur Rahman J]

2 minutes ago, Praesi said:

It doesnt work. Thats all you should care about. Get exact the same DIMM and all will work fine.

Ah alright bro, many of em here are giving solutions so im gonna just give it a try and see. Thanks for the reply man!

[Abdur Rahman J]

39 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Install one stick at a time.

Use CPU-Z or Aida64 to look at the SPD profiles in the memory sticks and write them down on a sheet of paper

Then pick a profile that's supported by both sticks or pick the closest profile and relax it to work with both sticks.

 

You have a DDR3L stick that most likely defaults to running at 1.35v and at PC12800 (1600 mhz) cl11 , and you have a ddr3 1866 stick that's probably 1866 Mhz and probably requires 1.65v to reach 1866 mhz.

You could probably get the 4gb stick to run at 1600 mhz with 1.5v  and then you more or less overvoltage the samsung stick by setting it at 1.5v

 

So best bet would be to install the samsung stick first, manually configure the voltage to 1.5v from 1.35v, maybe increase the timings to more than 11-11-whatever is by default

Then after restart, try inserting the other stick and hope it sticks to using the same timings and 1.5v

 

but most likely bios has a fit because you're mixing ddr3L (1.35v) and regular ddr3 which probably has 1.65v profiles (and some default jedec 1.5v profiles)

 

// yeah kinda like what @MageTank wrote, he was simply faster... and maybe i mixed the frequencies, or he did... doesn't matter, as long as you get the idea.

Alright man, thanks for the reply. I will give it a try and update you and ill ask you if there are any questions regarding the issue. Im very new to PC building so a bit confused!

[Jurrunio]

51 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Okay, so there are a few things at play here. First of all, you are attempting to mix a 1.35v DDR3L 1866 C11 DIMM with a 1.5v DDR3 1600 C9 DIMM. The different capacities don't really matter at all, as your memory controller is likely capable of running Flex Channel Mode, but this difference in voltage, speed and primary timings is going to absolutely confuse your IMC. Since your 1.35V DIMM is technically faster from a bandwidth perspective (1866 vs 1600), your IMC might be trying to force it to run at 1600mhz like the other DIMM, but your 1600mhz DIMM also has tighter timings. In this configuration, I am not sure what comes out on top in training. You are also mixing a single rank DIMM with a dual rank DIMM, which adds another layer of complexity for the IMC to figure out in regards to specific tertiary timings and bank/rank interleaving.

1866 is considered an OC for DDR3 only platforms so I think there should be 1600MHz or even 1333MHz JEDEC spec SPD profiles in it.

 

did you just come back again?

[MageTank]

15 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

1866 is considered an OC for DDR3 only platforms so I think there should be 1600MHz or even 1333MHz JEDEC spec SPD profiles in it.

 

did you just come back again?

There are JEDEC 1866 profiles for DDR3L that are not considered an OC per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM

 

As for being back, I am pretty active for lurking, just extremely busy over the past year or so with my job. My last promotion, while putting me in my dream position, demands far more of my free time, so I don't get to post as much as I'd like to.

 

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Install one stick at a time.

Use CPU-Z or Aida64 to look at the SPD profiles in the memory sticks and write them down on a sheet of paper

Then pick a profile that's supported by both sticks or pick the closest profile and relax it to work with both sticks.

 

You have a DDR3L stick that most likely defaults to running at 1.35v and at PC12800 (1600 mhz) cl11 , and you have a ddr3 1866 stick that's probably 1866 Mhz and probably requires 1.65v to reach 1866 mhz.

You could probably get the 4gb stick to run at 1600 mhz with 1.5v  and then you more or less overvoltage the samsung stick by setting it at 1.5v

 

So best bet would be to install the samsung stick first, manually configure the voltage to 1.5v from 1.35v, maybe increase the timings to more than 11-11-whatever is by default

Then after restart, try inserting the other stick and hope it sticks to using the same timings and 1.5v

 

but most likely bios has a fit because you're mixing ddr3L (1.35v) and regular ddr3 which probably has 1.65v profiles (and some default jedec 1.5v profiles)

 

// yeah kinda like what @MageTank wrote, he was simply faster... and maybe i mixed the frequencies, or he did... doesn't matter, as long as you get the idea.

I was definitely mistaken. I thought the Samsung DIMM was 1866 C11, but you are correct in that it's 1600 C11 (PC12800 / 8 = 1600). No idea why my brain saw 1866.

 

29 minutes ago, Praesi said:

It doesnt work. Thats all you should care about. Get exact the same DIMM and all will work fine.

It can work, it just might take additional effort in order to make it work. Whether that effort is worth it or not will be entirely subjective and depend on the comfort level of the user. I personally advise against it, but it's not impossible or inherently dangerous to the system.

 

33 minutes ago, Abdur Rahman J said:

Hey, thanks for the reply man! First of all, i should set everything manually in the bios to 1600mhz and 1.5v right? shoulf i change the primary timings too? ill give it a shot and update you on the same ASAP! 

I would simply dial in 1.5V for VDIMM, leave VCCSA/VCCIO on auto. Since the Samsung kit is asking for C11, it might be worth dialing in 1600 C11-11-11-35 for now, then slowly tighten them down to 9-9-9-27. With the added voltage, I imagine the Samsung kit can do 1600 C9 just fine, but baby steps are ideal, just to at least have it POSTing before we go for lower latency.

[Jurrunio]

23 minutes ago, MageTank said:

There are JEDEC 1866 profiles for DDR3L that are not considered an OC per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM

ya but profiles in sticks follow what CPUs common at the time support. Same for 3200MHz on DDR4, 1.35v kits (at least some of them) are totally capable of this frequency at much looser timings (to match JEDEC specs) but none of them come with 1.2V 3200MHz profile. It took much longer till 1.2V 3200MHz sticks became common.

[MageTank]

14 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

ya but profiles in sticks follow what CPUs common at the time support. Same for 3200MHz on DDR4, 1.35v kits (at least some of them) are totally capable of this frequency at much looser timings (to match JEDEC specs) but none of them come with 1.2V 3200MHz profile. It took much longer till 1.2V 3200MHz sticks became common.

I don't recall mentioning 3200mhz. My point is that DDR3's JEDEC standards included an 1866mhz standard and it existed alongside Haswell: https://www.jedec.org/document_search?search_api_views_fulltext=ddr3

 

I think there may be some confusion between JEDEC standards and IMC qualifications. Intel's DDR3 memory controller was qualified up to 1600mhz on Haswell, so anything beyond that would be considered an OC from the IMC's perspective, but not from JEDEC's perspective based on their standardization. Broadwell's memory controller brought "official support" of 1866mhz for Intel's IMC and did not consider it an OC if JEDEC standards were adhered to. 

[porina]

8 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Broadwell's memory controller brought "official support" of 1866mhz for Intel's IMC and did not consider it an OC if JEDEC standards were adhered to. 

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/88040/intel-core-i7-5775c-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html

Intel only seems to list support to 1600, and I'm not in the mood to dig out my actual CPU to double check what it does. Actually, it looks confusing to me, the web site says DDR3L@1.5V, which is just DDR3 isn't it? Broadwell-E was DDR4. I have no idea what Broadwell mobile used.

[MageTank]

5 minutes ago, porina said:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/88040/intel-core-i7-5775c-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html

Intel only seems to list support to 1600, and I'm not in the mood to dig out my actual CPU to double check what it does. Actually, it looks confusing to me, the web site says DDR3L@1.5V, which is just DDR3 isn't it? Broadwell-E was DDR4. I have no idea what Broadwell mobile used.

Yeah... the 5775C... I, along with the rest of the world, forgot that existed. The Broadwell I was referring to was the mobile chips: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/84995/intel-core-i7-5650u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-20-ghz.html, https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/87718/intel-core-i7-5775r-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-80-ghz.html, https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/87719/intel-core-i7-5850hq-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html.

 

To really complicate matters, Intel's 5550U supported 1866, but the 5600 didn't:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/84992/intel-core-i7-5550u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-00-ghz.html

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/85215/intel-core-i7-5600u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-20-ghz.html

 

Looking further into it, it looks like it's based on the iGPU:

 

This information is from Intel's whitesheets on Broadwell. CPU's with GT3 graphics supported up to 1866mhz while GT2 supported up to 1600mhz. In light of this discovery, I am going to slink back into the shadows and ponder whether or not I know what I am talking about, lol.

[Praesi]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

 

It can work, it just might take additional effort in order to make it work. Whether that effort is worth it or not will be entirely subjective and depend on the comfort level of the user. I personally advise against it, but it's not impossible or inherently dangerous to the system.

Yes, it can. But for him the most easy way is just to get another of the same.

[Abdur Rahman J]

2 hours ago, MageTank said:

There are JEDEC 1866 profiles for DDR3L that are not considered an OC per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM

 

As for being back, I am pretty active for lurking, just extremely busy over the past year or so with my job. My last promotion, while putting me in my dream position, demands far more of my free time, so I don't get to post as much as I'd like to.

 

I was definitely mistaken. I thought the Samsung DIMM was 1866 C11, but you are correct in that it's 1600 C11 (PC12800 / 8 = 1600). No idea why my brain saw 1866.

 

It can work, it just might take additional effort in order to make it work. Whether that effort is worth it or not will be entirely subjective and depend on the comfort level of the user. I personally advise against it, but it's not impossible or inherently dangerous to the system.

 

I would simply dial in 1.5V for VDIMM, leave VCCSA/VCCIO on auto. Since the Samsung kit is asking for C11, it might be worth dialing in 1600 C11-11-11-35 for now, then slowly tighten them down to 9-9-9-27. With the added voltage, I imagine the Samsung kit can do 1600 C9 just fine, but baby steps are ideal, just to at least have it POSTing before we go for lower latency.

Hey man, i tried and nothing seems to be working

[Jurrunio]

2 hours ago, MageTank said:

I don't recall mentioning 3200mhz. My point is that DDR3's JEDEC standards included an 1866mhz standard and it existed alongside Haswell: https://www.jedec.org/document_search?search_api_views_fulltext=ddr3

 

I think there may be some confusion between JEDEC standards and IMC qualifications. Intel's DDR3 memory controller was qualified up to 1600mhz on Haswell, so anything beyond that would be considered an OC from the IMC's perspective, but not from JEDEC's perspective based on their standardization. Broadwell's memory controller brought "official support" of 1866mhz for Intel's IMC and did not consider it an OC if JEDEC standards were adhered to. 

I'm just taking 3200MHz in DDR4 era as example. Basically memory kit vendors dont care about JEDEC specs as much as CPU support. They pretty much look at what CPUs support at most without overclocking, copy the JEDEC specs for that frequency, and if needed put a much better setting that can only be used with XMP. If none or very few CPUs support a JEDEC specified frequency natively, then it will be exceedingly rare to be found in a factory SPD chip

[MageTank]

16 hours ago, Abdur Rahman J said:

Hey man, i tried and nothing seems to be working

It's possible the board is simply struggling to train the memory due to the many differences between each DIMM. Just to confirm, they both work independently when you install them one DIMM at a time, it's only failing when you install them together? It might be worth installing the Samsung DIMM, write down all of the timings (primary, secondary and tertiary) then install the Zion DIMM by itself and dial those settings in. If it posts with a single DIMM with those settings pre-trained, you might be able to simply add the Samsung DIMM and help prime the training process.

[Abdur Rahman J]

UPDATE: One slot in my motherboard wasnt working so had to change motherboard and then got the same 8 GB samsung module and now i can use the total 16 GB Ram! Thanks for the reply guys, means a lot!