Help testing new RAM?

[Gessler]

Hey so my friend is building his first gaming rig and just bought 2 sticks of G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 RAM (2133MHz), each is 8GB (total 16gb) and he wanted me to test it out on my system to see if it was working or not as his Motherboard has not yet arrived and the warranty return period of the online vendor has just 2 days left. Now I've never installed RAM before (my Corsair Vengeance was already installed by the guys who sold me the components upon my request) and need to know how to go about doing this the proper way.

 

So my MoBo is an MSI Z97 Gaming 7 and I currently use 16gigs of Vengeance DDR3-1333MHz RAM, as 2x8GB sticks. I know that this board & my 64-bit Win10 can take upto 32GB RAM so no need to remove my existing sticks before installing these...but I've heard that installing RAMs of two different clockspeeds (1333 & 2133) might clock the system down to the lesser of the two so I guess I won't be able to properly test whether the 2133MHz ones are working optimally or not? Please advice if I should remove my existing sticks before installing the new ones.

 

Now onto the case of static discharge...I don't want to mess up my friend's newly-bought RAM, nor do I want to mess up any of my components either. But I don't have any static straps or anything designed to ground myself. I'm gonna be setting my case down on the marble flooring of my house...should I do it barefoot while standing or is sitting down on my cotton pajamas fine? Should I wear rubber slippers? Should I leave the plug in the wall socket or not? I guess touching any metal part of the case frame for a while before working on the components should be good enough but please advice anyway.

 

And about testing the RAM after I insert it and boot up the PC? I do not know what kind of bootup menus will greet me but about diagnostic software I have Piriform Speccy which seems good, anything else I need?

 

Please advice guys.

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

just pop in the rams when ur pc is off, dont need to disconnect the power rly(just dont press the power button when seating them )

 

set timings to xmp profile in bios

 

run memtest86 for a whole night

 

run custom prime95 with custom memory allocation ( till it fully fills up ur ram.. should be around 6500 for 8gb so 14500 for 16gb ) atleast 21-22hr

 

i build all my rigs on socks , never had static electricty problems ( and those were aloooot of builds ), aslong the power cord is connected to the wall ur grounded

[Gessler]

just pop in the rams when ur pc is off, dont need to disconnect the power rly(just dont press the power button when seating them )

 

set timings to xmp profile in bios

 

run memtest86 for a whole night

 

run custom prime95 with custom memory allocation ( till it fully fills up ur ram.. should be around 6500 for 8gb so 14500 for 16gb ) atleast 21-22hr

 

i build all my rigs on socks , never had static electricty problems ( and those were aloooot of builds ), aslong the power cord is connected to the wall ur grounded

 

Hey thanks man....although unrelated to the OP topic, is it safe to connect a new HDD while the power is on and the system is running? The HDD is already in the tray, just

connecting the power and the SATA cable?

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

Hey thanks man....although unrelated to the OP topic, is it safe to connect a new HDD while the power is on and the system is running? The HDD is already in the tray, just

connecting the power and the SATA cable?

yeah but if the sata port is not a hot plug port the hdd might not be detected, its better to do with turning the system off on hdds for compatibility   but u can connect them while the pc is on and if the sata ports support hot plugging then it should be detected aswell