Can I mix ram sticks?

[bjsdeer]

I have a single stick of ddr3 1600 MHz RAM in my system and I was wondering if I could add more ram whether that be another 8gb stick or a set of two 4gb sticks. The ram I have now I pulled out of a prebuilt system so I don't think I will be able to find another stick of the same kind. My mobo does have two different lanes for RAM (four slots total) is this helps. Thanks in advance for the help!

[WoodenMarker]

It will probably work but ram used outside of their preconfigured kits aren't guaranteed to.

[TheKDub]

I have a single stick of ddr3 1600 MHz RAM in my system and I was wondering if I could add more ram whether that be another 8gb stick or a set of two 4gb sticks. The ram I have now I pulled out of a prebuilt system so I don't think I will be able to find another stick of the same kind. My mobo does have two different lanes for RAM (four slots total) is this helps. Thanks in advance for the help!

Yes, you can mix RAM sticks, though you should aim for the latency and speed to be the same. (so if one is 1600Mhz CL9, you'd want the others to be 1600Mhz CL9, if you were to have 1866Mhz CL9 and 1600Mhz CL9 dimms, the 1866Mhz dimm(s) would downclock themselves to be running at 1600Mhz.)

 

 

It should work, though it's not 100% guaranteed.

[daniellearmouth]

You can...in theory.

 

My old rig used two Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3-1333 modules at first, then I added two Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP 4GB DDR3-1600 modules without realising the...uhh...RAMifications of running two different brands and specifications. The reason I needed very low profile RAM is because the Noctua NH-D14 is a bitch to work with if you have standard profile RAM.

It didn't have a single problem, amazingly. It worked like a dream.

 

So I did the same with my laptop; it has a generic 8GB DDR3-1600 module, and I added a Kingston HyperX Impact 4GB DDR3-1600 module as well, since this laptop has up to 16GB support across two modules.

MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BLUE SCREENS UP THE WAZOO!! There were times where it worked without issue, but as I kept on using it it got progressively worse. I couldn't work with it for much longer, so I removed the old module since memory diagnostics told me it was bad.

 

So whilst it can work sometimes, and in some instances you won't have a single issue, it is highly recommended that you buy the same brand and same spec of RAM as the one in your board. It might have a different heat spreader, but better to have inconsistent looking RAM than an inconsistently working computer.

[abhigyan001]

It does work and I have done it several times, however you should try to get the same stick of the same brand. It is better to get 2 4 GB sticks and run them in Dual channel and let the third stick be in a separate slot.

[Qwerty2323]

Well mixing should only downgrade to lower Hz ram set up. That is if you even had set up in bios to use more then base. Most of bios will always set up ram to base Hz meaning you would have to mamualy change higher Hz if your ram supports it. So only issue befote mixing is turning back custom clock to base clock and then should be no issue. As for getting mixed ram to work with custom clock that might be hard or imposible.