RAM?

[natsuu]

i just had a question if i had 4 slots for ram could i put two 4 gigs and two 8 gigs?

[GalacticRuler]

Yes, but make sure they are the same model.

[DocSwag]

It should work as long as it's the exact same ram (besides the capacity obviously so timings and frequency need to be the same).

 

Also you look at your mobo manual and find which slots you would put ram in if you only had 2 sticks of ram. Stick either both 4gb sticks or both 8gb sticks in there. It either won't work or you will get a drop in memory bandwidth once you surpass 8gb ram usage otherwise.

[MageTank]

1 hour ago, CUDA_Cores said:

yes, with RAM you can mix and match, capacity, timings, speeds, and even brands. The only thing you can't mix is generations ie don't try to put DDR2 in a DDR3 system.  I've mixed and matched RAM sticks plenty of times before in systems and 99.5% of the time it works totally fine. It's just that your computer will take a performance hit if you choose to mix and RAM because it will run all your RAM at the lowest speed and the highest timings. 

Actually you can mix RAM models. You want to try to avoid it if possible but it can be done.

This is correct. To add on to this, you will want to put the same capacity sticks in the same channel. For example:

 

DIMM A1: 4GB

DIMM A2: 8GB

DIMM B1: 4GB

DIMM B2: 8GB

 

In this configuration, you will be running in dual channel. If you differ from the configuration, and do say, this:

 

DIMM A1: 4GB

DIMM A2: 4GB

DIMM B1: 8GB

DIMM B2: 8GB

 

You will run in what is known as Flex Channel Mode. The 4GB half of the 8GB sticks will run in dual channel with the 4GB stick, but the remaining 4GB on the 8GB stick will be in single channel. Intel has a nice guide on this subject: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/000005657.html

[Lord Nicoll]

2 hours ago, natsuu said:

i just had a question if i had 4 slots for ram could i put two 4 gigs and two 8 gigs?

Should be fine, as long as your board is recent and isn't a server (you have to put the sticks in EXACTLY the right DIMM socket) if the timings or clocks are different it will revert to the slowest, make sure you use the same  size RAM in each channel, it works, well pretty much the same but the system uses less resources addressing it. 

[glitchmaster0001]

you can mix and match ram but the ram will run at the slowest common speed. say you have 2 sticks of DDR3 1866MHz with CL 10 and timings of  10-11-10-30 then you decide to add 2 more stick of DDR3 but this time its a different brand and speed say DDR3 1333MHz with a CL of 9 and timings of 9-9-9-24. now when you boot the PC the IMC will detect different speed ram sticks and run all 4 of them at the slower kits speed, cas latency and timings so all 4 sticks will be now running at 1333MHz with a CL of 9 and timings 9-9-9-24 even if you had higher speed memory installed.