Mixing different Ram brands?

[Y4SSW]

Hi everyone!

 

So I found a pair of ram laying around from my old build it’s a pair of 2x8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 2133MHz CL15.

I want to give them to my little brother since he stutters sometimes when playing GTA FiveM or when having lots of chrome tabs open. He has a Kingston HyperX fury 2x4GB DDR4 2133MHz CL14. Since i don’t even use mine i want him to have them. Now my question is can I mix and match these ram? Will it give me a total of 24GB? Or will I cause some hardware damage like break his motherboard by doing this?

 

his pc is:

CPU: i5 - 7500

mobo: MSI B250 Krait Gaming

RAM: Kingston HyperX fury 2x4GB DDR4 2133MHz CL14

[CommanderAlex]

12 minutes ago, Y4SSW said:

Hi everyone!

 

So I found a pair of ram laying around from my old build it’s a pair of 2x8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 2133MHz CL15.

I want to give them to my little brother since he stutters sometimes when playing GTA FiveM or when having lots of chrome tabs open. He has a Kingston HyperX fury 2x4GB DDR4 CL14. Since i don’t even use mine i want him to have them. Now my question is can I mix and match these ram? Will it give me a total of 24GB? Or will I cause some hardware damage like break his motherboard by doing this?

 

his pc is:

CPU: i5 - 7500

mobo: MSI B250 Krait Gaming

RAM: Kingston HyperX fury 2x4GB DDR4 CL14

So, you won't cause hardware damage, but may cause system instability due to the RAM sticks not being identical in timings. Now I don't know what frequency his RAM kit is too so at worst, the system will revert to the slowest DIMM for settings. Also, mixing capacities is not ideal too for this reason. 

 

It's best to avoid mixing kits such as these for stability. 

[UnknownWalls]

Just now, CommanderAlex said:

So, you won't cause hardware damage, but may cause system instability due to the RAM sticks not being identical in timings. Now I don't know what frequency his RAM kit is too so at worst, the system will revert to the slowest DIMM for settings. Also, mixing capacities is not ideal too for this reason. 

 

It's best to avoid mixing kits such as these for stability. 

Yeah. Just swap the sticks and get 16gb. That on its own should be enough to save your little brother from the evil monster known as stuttering

[mdk777]

well you would need to be willing to play in the bios to find the lowest common denominator.

ie. the identical voltage and frequency and CAS latency that they both work at.

Your mother board MIGHT do this automatically, or simply give up and go to stock ie. not XMP settings.

 

If this is the case you may find that 16 GB running at correct settings is much faster than 24 at reduced.

 

My guess is that will be the case even if you do get the settings adjusted.

 

Mismatched sticks in both size and CAS are going to make the memory controler work overtime.

 

Just pull out the 8 and replace with the 16

  

[CommanderAlex]

1 minute ago, UnknownWallsTwitch said:

Yeah. Just swap the sticks and get 16gb. That on its own should be enough to save your little brother from the evil monster known as stuttering

That too haha. Definitely some more RAM is good, especially nowadays. I'd suspect the current RAM in the PC is not fast in frequency too due to it being CL14 and judging off the rest of the system, won't be tight timings, high frequency kit which would be odd to pair with a i5-7500. 

[Y4SSW]

8 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

So, you won't cause hardware damage, but may cause system instability due to the RAM sticks not being identical in timings. Now I don't know what frequency his RAM kit is too so at worst, the system will revert to the slowest DIMM for settings. Also, mixing capacities is not ideal too for this reason. 

 

It's best to avoid mixing kits such as these for stability. 

They are also 2133MHz

[CommanderAlex]

1 minute ago, Y4SSW said:

They are also 2133MHz

Ok. Definitely don't mix both kits and just upgrade your brother to the 16GB kit instead. 

[Y4SSW]

4 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

Ok. Definitely don't mix both kits and just upgrade your brother to the 16GB kit instead. 

Will do, thankyou for the answer : ) may i also ask u why ? I thaught since both had same frequency 2133mhz the chances of them running smoothly would be bigger. Could u explain me why i shouldn’t better do it. I know nothing about memory/ram : )

[mdk777]

Mismatched sticks in both size and CAS are going to make the memory controller work overtime.

 

frequency is only part of the equation.

 

you could always try....but you will be spending many hours of testing and adjusting to come up with what every memory supplier tells you.

 

Could you get it to run? Yes. Will it be faster? NO

Just more memory does not equal more speed unless you have the cores and programing to access it.

Gaming does not..... 16GB running at optimal settings will be much faster than 24GB that requires the CPU to hunt and peck ....memory pipelines, pagefiles etc. etc.

 

 

 

 

[CommanderAlex]

2 minutes ago, Y4SSW said:

Will do, thankyou for the answer : ) may i also ask u why ? I thaught since both had same frequency 2133mhz the chances of them running smoothly would be bigger. Could u explain me why i shouldn’t better do it. I know nothing about memory/ram : )

Currently, the PC has 2x 4GB DIMMs, which the actual IC chip that's memory is a lower capacity than the 2x8GB DIMMs, which have a higher capacity. Also, the IC chips may come from one of three big manufacturer's of RAM ICs; Micron (Crucial), Samsung, and SK Hynix. Mixing them are not ideal as they can place a lot of stress on the integrated memory controller, or IMC, located in the CPU. The IMC is responsible for handling the data between CPU and RAM. Having two different kits can create system instability such as freezes/lockups, BSOD, etc.