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Will it work?

Tags:
  • RAM
  • Motherboards
  • Memory
Last response: in Memory
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October 9, 2014 11:16:12 PM

Hi, i wanted to ask if i can buy 2 sticks of 2GB (My motherboard only has 2 Slots) and then remove the 1 stick and add a single 8GB stick. Will i have 10GB working ram?

More about : work

October 9, 2014 11:26:21 PM

Short answer, most likely yes. Unless your motherboard has issues with mismatched RAM pairs. If it is a newer motherboard (last 3-4 years) this should not be as much of an issue.

Long version will be in the next post.
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October 9, 2014 11:31:37 PM

Don't do that. Your RAM comes in two slots because it's dual channel, so even if it does work you could have awful performance issues. Not only that, the motherboard will run the RAM at the speed of RAM stick that has the least performance. This means if you buy a stick of RAM that's 8GB @1333MHz but your other stick is 2GB @800MHz then both sticks will run at 800MHz, totally defeating any performance gains. There are many other issues you'll run into, errors, one stick will be hotter than the other, and both Windows and memory controllers may run into significant issues between the two sticks. Whatever gain you might believe you'll get, you won't.

RAM is too cheap to skimp on and the performance gains for doing things right are stupendous. Adding nice RAM is easily one of the cheapest ways to improve a computer very dramatically.
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October 9, 2014 11:42:56 PM

Longer answer, most likely but you will probably take a performance hit that is greater than the 2 gigs you gain by having both slots filled. Let me explain it as simply as I can. The first thing is most mother boards with 2 slots run dual channel. With dual channel most mother boards will only stay in dual channel if both lanes are occupied by similar or paired RAM sticks. If they are mismatched, most motherboards will disable dual channel and revert to single channel. This is your first performance loss. The second one comes in dues to the larger and smaller sticks most likely having different speeds and/or timing. You mother board is going to have to figure out what speed and timings both sticks will run at (assuming you have your mobo on auto select for memory and not set speed/timings). Most of the time this will cause both sticks to run slower than the slowest of the two. This is your second performance loss.

It would be my recommendation that if you purchase 1 8gig stick, you only use the 1 8gig stick. It is more and enough RAM for most applications and gaming and it will eliminate the issues I speak about above.

One additional issue you may run into, which I have run into before with mismatched pairs, is memory read/write errors. These can cause BSODs, memory dumb errors, etc.
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October 10, 2014 12:18:20 AM

Quaiden said:
Longer answer, most likely but you will probably take a performance hit that is greater than the 2 gigs you gain by having both slots filled. Let me explain it as simply as I can. The first thing is most mother boards with 2 slots run dual channel. With dual channel most mother boards will only stay in dual channel if both lanes are occupied by similar or paired RAM sticks. If they are mismatched, most motherboards will disable dual channel and revert to single channel. This is your first performance loss. The second one comes in dues to the larger and smaller sticks most likely having different speeds and/or timing. You mother board is going to have to figure out what speed and timings both sticks will run at (assuming you have your mobo on auto select for memory and not set speed/timings). Most of the time this will cause both sticks to run slower than the slowest of the two. This is your second performance loss.

It would be my recommendation that if you purchase 1 8gig stick, you only use the 1 8gig stick. It is more and enough RAM for most applications and gaming and it will eliminate the issues I speak about above.

One additional issue you may run into, which I have run into before with mismatched pairs, is memory read/write errors. These can cause BSODs, memory dumb errors, etc.


I think there's an echo
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