Do 'ram kits' by the same brand work together?

Ricky-M

Ricky-M

Ricky-M

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Does anyone know if it's possible to run 2 x same brand / same part number DDR3 ram kits together?

I was given a PC which has 2 x 8GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT4G3D1608DT1TX0 sticks which were apparently purchased as a kit of 2.

I was hoping to upgrade it to 16GB by buying another 2 Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT4G3D1608DT1TX0 sticks and using all 4 together.
 
Matched kits is the best way to do it, however in most cases any similar spec memory will be fine as the BIOS will train the the most conservative settings.

I've run lots of 4 DIMM PC's all with two kits of 2 DIMMS, 4 DIMM kits are really just marketing.

As above, depending on the CPU, you main need to downrate the clock speed of memory timing at 4 DIMMS on say Sandy Bridge which only officially supported 1333Mhz, but 1600Mhz should be fine on Ivy Bridge and up. At this point, depends on the CPU memory controller and how hard that has been hammered with voltage (if a preowned part), voltage regulation on the board and how aggressive the SPD setting of the DIMMS are.

Give it a spin and make sure you run a memory test to check both the gifted kit and any other kit are fully working as memory can be damaged by handling
 
I did the same thing with a DDR4 kit, I brought what I thought was exactly the same kit, even the ICs were the same, but they didn't play nice together, I found a work around for it, you have the buy the paid version of thaiphoon burner, take the SPD off 1 stick along with the XMP profile and flash it to the other 3, it basically makes it a quad channel matched kit, this is worst case scenario though.
 
Mix and matching is often fine if you know enough to hand tune the BIOS settings (and have access to the relevant BIOS settings) to the optimal settings - but if you are relying on XMP or similar then it becomes more complicated.
 
Certainly it works. I have a number of older PC's that I upgraded by adding "more of the same" RAM. I had a gaming PC not that many years ago that had the same solution.
 
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I wouldn't worry about it. I have a system running DDR3 kits from different brands with different sizes and speeds (2x2GB Gskill Ripjaws 1600mhz CL7 paired with 2x4GB Corsair 1600mhz CL9) and it runs fine albeit the ripjaws are a bit 'wasted' in the sense it's not running CAS7.
As mentioned you'll probably need to manually set it up in the BIOS but most people on here probably do that anyway.
 
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Jaytwocents did a video on this last year. Using two kits of the same RAM and brand works fine. Ive been doing it for longer than I can remember and never have an issue.
You introduce degradation when you have kits of different timings and frequency.
 
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