RAM upgrade

[Rainbrew]

I have a few questions regarding upgrading my ram. My motherboard is a Gigabyte H61M-D2H-USB3 and I'm currently running 2x4gb of some "Nanya Technologies" RAM. I'm inclined to believe that this ram is a more likely bottleneck in multiple games than my pretty much brand new WD Blue which is regularly defragged and after a fresh windows installation. Am I able to populate this motherboard with, for example, 3 sticks in order to get 12 GB of ram? Also is buying used RAM abnormally risky, for some reason unknown to me, or is it actually a safer bet to buy used than other computer components? Budget is tight hence considering buying used. Thanks in advance!

[RawLobster]

8gb of ram is still decent and probably not slowing you down much, if at all. I'd assume it's not so fast, but differences will be marginal in that area as well anyway. It being a cheaper brand isn't going to effect the advertised speed or other specs, it just may not be the same quality as known brands and may fail or stop working earlier.

 

Running 3 sticks can work, but running memory in it's dual channel configurations is better, especially beyond 1 stick. 

 

I'd maybe pay attention to how much memory you're actually using and what's using it. Beyond 8gb can be great for multitasking, especially with multiple browser tabs, but if you're experiencing slowness in games or single apps running alone, I'd say it probably doesn't have anything to do with your memory.

 

As for buying used, the biggest risks are probably sticks that have tens of thousands of hours on them (though this is more common with server memory) or just the regular concerns when buying used PC parts. I find that memory doesn't necessarily fail more often than other components, but it can seem like it since you use more of them than anything else in a PC.