Using 3x of exact same ram on a motherboard with 2 couples of slots

sobhanriazi

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Oct 6, 2017
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hey guys. I currently have 2x4gb corsair XMS3 1600mhz C11 DDR3 on my Asus b85 plus motherboard. my motherboard has 4 ram slots. 2 colored white, 2 black. the black ones are currently filled with my own 2 rams.
I am also going two buy 1 of exact same ram I currently have on those 2 black slots. and place it in one of those white slots. ( I supposed to buy 2 but that ram model is old and I couldn't find it anywhere to purchase in place where I live) so yeah my only choice is 3x4gb for now.

My question is: is it even possible? is having 3 rams on my system a good idea since one slot remains empty and it wont have any couple? I'm in doubt because rams are usually 4,8,16,32gbs and I never heard someone have 12gb of rams.
would this work properly ? or would it make my system slow bring crash and bsod, sudden resets or other problems? is it safe to do so?
please help me :(
 
Solution
Plus, you will not have the speed advantage of dual-channel for at least that one new stick. Depending on the motherboard it could all slow down to single-channel; I haven't been able to find the specific information for your motherboard.

Don't know where you live or what you can afford; pretty easy to get a set of four guaranteed to work together around here but about $160. For example, https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145347&cm_re=4gb_1600mhz_DDR3-_-20-145-347-_-Product . Or you can pick up a single stick of Corsair Value Select for US $30.

DDR and DDR2 were quite tolerant of mix-and-match. Starting with DDR3, if you don't have a kit that was tested to work together you may have to relax timings, lower...
Plus, you will not have the speed advantage of dual-channel for at least that one new stick. Depending on the motherboard it could all slow down to single-channel; I haven't been able to find the specific information for your motherboard.

Don't know where you live or what you can afford; pretty easy to get a set of four guaranteed to work together around here but about $160. For example, https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145347&cm_re=4gb_1600mhz_DDR3-_-20-145-347-_-Product . Or you can pick up a single stick of Corsair Value Select for US $30.

DDR and DDR2 were quite tolerant of mix-and-match. Starting with DDR3, if you don't have a kit that was tested to work together you may have to relax timings, lower voltages, or sacrifice a persimmon to get them to work together. I personally have two different two-stick kits in my PC and they play together nicely, but that's the luck of the draw.
 
Solution