Two Questions about RAM

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ElMuchachoJumbo

ElMuchachoJumbo

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Mar 7, 2014
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Hi, I am building a new gaming pc and I have two questions. First, I want 2x4 GB and 2x2 GB for a total of 12 GB. I would get 3x4 but my motherboard is only dual channel, so I decided to get two sticks of 2Gb and 2 sticks of 4GB. Would this be ok (like would the computer still work fine)? The speeds are all the same (1600mhz)

Second question: the 2x2 GB ram that I want to get does not say anything in its specs about pc3. The 2x4GB ram has PC3 12800 but this one doesn't say anything about PC3. What does this mean?
 
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DDR3 ram is in kits for a reason. It works best when you buy 1 kit of RAM and use it. Matching two sets of the same brand/manfacture and speed RAM is acceptable but not recommended.

Do not mix two different kinds of RAM, or two different sizes. It might work, but you will gain better performance from the two 4 GB sticks in dual than you would from any other combination.

You won't really benefit much from over 8GB of RAM anyway.

It's not that you can't, but you will most likely get BSOD's down the line. DDR3 RAM is fast, and it's important that both sticks run at...
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Alec Mowat

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Jan 8, 2014
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DDR3 ram is in kits for a reason. It works best when you buy 1 kit of RAM and use it. Matching two sets of the same brand/manfacture and speed RAM is acceptable but not recommended.

Do not mix two different kinds of RAM, or two different sizes. It might work, but you will gain better performance from the two 4 GB sticks in dual than you would from any other combination.

You won't really benefit much from over 8GB of RAM anyway.

It's not that you can't, but you will most likely get BSOD's down the line. DDR3 RAM is fast, and it's important that both sticks run at the exact same specs. If you take two different speed RAMS with different timings, and try to change the settings to match, it will be trouble for you.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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PC3 is simply another designator for the DRAM, most look at the freq 1333, 1600, 1866, etc the PC3 indicates it's DDR3 and the following number i.e. 12800 for 1600 DRAM, tells you the theoretical maximum MT/s (mega transfers per second (roughly MegaBytes per second))
 
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Alec Mowat

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Just use the two matching 4 GB sticks, and ditch the 2 2GB sticks. They will most likely decrease overall performance.
 
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