Ram questions bout ma pc

Billwill103 · March 23

So i'm getting a hp 800 g1 sff and it has 4 DIMM slots and I have 4 ram sticks 3 are 8gb and 1 is 4gb so ma questions are these..

1. Can I use all 4 in it and have 28gb of ram???

2. If I can do they have to all be 1 brand???

3. Or can they be different brands as long as tha specs are tha same???

Thanks

RONOTHAN## · March 23

18 minutes ago, Billwill103 said:

Can I use all 4 in it and have 28gb of ram???

Probably.

18 minutes ago, Billwill103 said:

If I can do they have to all be 1 brand???

No.

18 minutes ago, Billwill103 said:

Or can they be different brands as long as tha specs are tha same???

Specs don't even have to be the same, it should run at the slowest common speed between them.

Mixing memory does have a luck component to it, where the only way to really know if it would work or not is to try it. It's probably going to work, but you can occasionally end up with incompatibility between two different stick types that make the system refuse to boot with them in the same system (this can happen even if the sticks are the same brand and model number). If you already own the RAM, you might as well give it a shot.

Billwill103 · March 24

13 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Probably.

No.

Specs don't even have to be the same, it should run at the slowest common speed between them.

Mixing memory does have a luck component to it, where the only way to really know if it would work or not is to try it. It's probably going to work, but you can occasionally end up with incompatibility between two different stick types that make the system refuse to boot with them in the same system (this can happen even if the sticks are the same brand and model number). If you already own the RAM, you might as well give it a shot.

So if they run at the lowest common speed between the four of them then I would be better off just putting the three 8 gigabytes And it and leaving the 4 GB 1 out of it, right? And my next question for you.ISIS there a possibility of me trying this?Will it mess my computer up or will it just refuse the reboot until I get the ram Sticks right and I appreciate the help bro

RONOTHAN## · March 24

11 minutes ago, Billwill103 said:

So if they run at the lowest common speed between the four of them then I would be better off just putting the three 8 gigabytes And it and leaving the 4 GB 1 out of it, right?

Depends on the speed rating of the sticks and whether you need the capacity. If the 4GB stick is rated at 2133 and the others are 3200, then yeah leaving that one stick out might be for the best, but if it's 2666 and 2933, running them in the same system is probably going to be better.

12 minutes ago, Billwill103 said:

Will it mess my computer up or will it just refuse the reboot until I get the ram Sticks right

It can refuse to boot, and it can sometimes give memory errors. Giving memory errors is pretty uncommon in my experience, usually it'll either turn on and be stable or not even POST, but it is still technically a possibility. Even if you do get memory errors, the symptoms would be random blue screens and crashes, and if you have it like that for too long it is possible to corrupt the operating system, but if you see those blue screens early enough it should hopefully not get to that point. Even so, once you go back to 3x8GB, the errors should stop, and even if the OS gets corrupted, a Windows reinstall will fix it.