Upgrade question

[hakashis]

Hi guys, 

I have Kingston Predator Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory for a long time now,
I want to upgrade to 16GB as I started to do some more work and topping my 8GB...
Now, I can buy another "same" set of 8GB but its pricey for the same stick's

I have ASUS MAXIMUS VII RANGER, I do lots of gaming, now the card has dual channel support but not quad, thats where I get stuck a little bit.

Buy a new 2x8GB set of ram and just add it to my MOBO as the price for 16gb is just a little bigger than 8gb set and just have 24GB in total.
Selling my 8GB wont be possible as almost nobody will buy it where I live.

Sorry if I'm not clear about it, not my native language.

 

Thanks

[UL_42L]

It's usually best to ensure all installed RAM is the same brand, model and capacity. You might want to give away your current RAM if nobody will buy it, but if you want, you could try to run them together. Just be aware there's a small chance for it to cause issues, and if your current 8GB is set to a lower or higher clock speed, it will limit/be limited by the new RAM.

[Quaker]

In most cases, the system will set the RAM parameters based upon what RAM is installed in the "first" (primary) slot(s) (check the manual). So, if you were to simply add some faster RAM - say DDR3-2400 - the system would downclock the 2400 and run it all at 1866 speeds. (It's usually more reliable to downclock faster RAM than to overclock slower RAM)

If you were to add DDR3-1600 RAM you should put it in the primary slots so the 1866 is downclocked to match the 1600 speeds.

 

In either case, if you add 2x8Gigs of RAM, you will either get 16 or 24 Gigs of working RAM.

The quantity of RAM seems to be more important to your usage than faster RAM, so personally, I'd just go for cheap DDR3-1600. (The overall system performance difference between 1600 and 1866 RAM is only 1 or 2% - not considering IGP.)