Mixing ram kit

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xd27

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May 9, 2014
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Hi, i have this setup:
i7-2600k
Asus Sabertooth P67
8GB (4GBx2) G.Skill RipjawsX F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
with a simple oc: cpu at 4.4GHz and ram at 1600Mhz
I'm thinking about a ram upgrade and i saw a 8GBx2 kit G.Skill F3-1600C9D-16GXM,is it ok or it's better to take another 4GBx2 kit like F3-12800CL9Q-8GBXL?
 
Solution
damric
Often times the same model RAM can actually contain different ICs if bought at different times. For this reason it's recommended to get all your RAM in one shot

But, nevertheless mixing RAM can be done if you know what you are doing. Generally stick with the more conservative timings and speed.
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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Often times the same model RAM can actually contain different ICs if bought at different times. For this reason it's recommended to get all your RAM in one shot

But, nevertheless mixing RAM can be done if you know what you are doing. Generally stick with the more conservative timings and speed.
 
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dgingeri

dgingeri

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Dec 4, 2009
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It'll still work, but your memory latency may increase. Addressing two DIMMs per channel does increase overhead. 16GB is quite a bit of memory, and you're likely to have excellent performance with just the new memory.

The most important thing is to keep them installed in pairs properly, and it looks like you have that part covered. You wouldn't believe the number of posts I see here of people having problems because they have mismatched memory all over the place.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards can be very sensitive to this.
That is why ram vendors will NOT support ram that is not bought in one kit.
Although, I think the problem has lessened with the newer Intel chipsets. Still,
it is safer to get what you need in one kit.

That said, either option is likely to work.
But... there are some considerations:

1. Does your os support >16gb? Home premium does not.

2. Overclocking is harder with 4 sticks vs 2 because of the need tor equal voltage regulation.

If budget is not an issue, I think I would just go with a simple 16gb kit of 2 x 8gb.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Yes, but not MORE than 16gb. The OP has 8gb and is considering adding 16gb giving 24gb.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Yes, you are correct...;)
 
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xd27

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May 9, 2014
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First I want to thank everybody for their answers.
Don't worry about the OS, I run only linux so I have no os limit in that way.
My motherboard officially supports up to 32GB of ram in dual channel.
I know that 4GBx2 + 8GBx2 is a lot of ram but I'm often limited by ram: after boot the os takes about 200MB but when I start to work with several virtual machines, compiling etc it starts to swap a lot!
The 4GBx2 kit that I already have and the 8GBx2 linked in the first post have the same latency and the same tested speed (1600Mhz).
The first one however has a SPD speed of 1600MHz while the other has SPD speed of 1333MHz.
Googling about SPD speed I found out that it is the speed used as default, but since I've manually set the speed in bios it shouldn't be a problem, am I right?
 
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