Looking for a single stick of 4GB RAM to add to my 2 sticks of Gskill Sniper.

SlugJones

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Sep 23, 2014
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So, I have 2 X 4gb sticks of Gskill 1866mhz Sniper RAM. I looked everywhere for a single stick of the same RAM, but Gskill simply does not sell them. They do however sell 4GB sticks of the Ripjaw X. The timings are exactly the same, the voltage is the same....everything is the same as far as I can tell.

RipJaw http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231720

My Snipers http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231460


Will it be ok to use the one stick of Ripjaw with my existing snipers that run in dual channel? (I have an 4790k on a z97 board, if that matters)

Thanks!
 
Solution
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
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.

The extra 4gb stick will need to match voltage, cas numbers and speed, and it still might not work.
Moreover, the odd stick will run in slower single channel mode.

You are on your own.
I suggest selling your current ram and buying a compatible 2 x 8gb kit.
No need for anything faster than 1866.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
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.

The extra 4gb stick will need to match voltage, cas numbers and speed, and it still might not work.
Moreover, the odd stick will run in slower single channel mode.

You are on your own.
I suggest selling your current ram and buying a compatible 2 x 8gb kit.
No need for anything faster than 1866.
 
Solution

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
You have 8Gb. 12Gb won't help in anything other than rendering and similar applications that are ram intensive.

Mixing ram is never a good idea. What you see as CAS or CL is the primary timings. This doesn't take into consideration the secondary and tertiary timings which number over 30 as compared to the 5 you normally see. Ram is composed primarily of silicon, which is not perfect, it can and does include differing impurities. The reason ram is sold in kits of 1x, 2x, 4x is because they all come from the same batch of silicon, so impurities are kept to a strict minimum. When you mix ram, you are mixing batches, and you can take 2 sticks of identical ram, identical vendor, size, CAS, speed and from 2 different batches and they don't play nice at all. It's worse than a pot luck lottery.

If you don't absolutely need more ram, you have enough, if you do need more, sell all the old, and buy a total new kit in the size, speed you want. It's the only way to guarantee the ram works together.
 

SlugJones

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Sep 23, 2014
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Thank you all for the clear answers. I believe I would like to keep my dual channel speeds, and will just sell the 2X4 sticks and get 2X8 sticks in a set for the reasons you mentioned. Thanks!
 

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
2x8GB would be the best bet, that way it's guaranteed to work. And for informative purposes - if you were to add a third stick and got it to play with your current DRAM , you wouldn't lose dual channel - the DRAM would go into Flex mode where 8GB would still be in dual channel mode and the odd 4GB would be running in single channel, technically you would take a small performance hit, but the additional 4GB would balance it out so overall performance wouldn't suffer and you would have the additional DRAM which can benefit the overall system