Mixing Ram Voltage - Motherboard Stability

builder123

Distinguished
Aug 5, 2014
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I have the H87M-PLUS/CSM Motherboard which I bought off a friend with 2x4GB of Corsair 1600MHz 1.65v RAM. I want to add another 16GB on top of this but have been reading elsewhere that 1.65v RAM is not the most stable voltage. I know the MHz of the additional RAM should match the 2x4GB but what about RAM voltage? Can I mix 1.5V with 1.65V? Should I just ditch the 2x4GB altogether?

I tried looking but couldn't find whether or not 1.65v is recommended on the H87. Anyone know where to look those ratings up?

 
Solution
Try it at 1.5V and if that does not work, bump it up by +0.05 and try again.

If you do not want to ratchet it up to 1.65V trying to make it work, your other option you could try would be to drop down to 1333.
OK if you plan on trying to mix match ram, which is not always possible because of compatibility issues, it is best to get the same speed, timings and voltage. The voltage is kind of a must if you want to run it like this for an extended period. putting 1.65V to a 1.5V set of ram could damage the ram over time.
 

bignastyid

Titan
Moderator
Ideally you want to match voltage clocks and CAS when mixing ram, and even then you can run into problems. Also on many boards using unbuffered ram maxing out the memory slots can put extra load on the MC and cause instability. Sometimes you can add voltage and relax timings and lower frequencies to compensate.
 
what do you need 24 gig of RAM for?

Ditch the 1.65 volt and just use 1.5 volt
If you try and run 4 DIMMs at 1.65 volt Im picking you will have cpu problems

You could run all 4 DIMMS at i.5 volts if you select an XMP profile from the 1.65 volt RAM that lowers the frequency , but again you'd have to have a really good reason to want 24 gig of RAM