Have 16GB of RAM coming, can I mix in my 4GB?

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Tobes

Tobes

Soldato
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So I did read the FAQ but I wanted to double check.

I have 2x8GB sticks of Corsair Dominator coming as well as a Z77X-UD5H mobo. I also have 4GB of Corsair Dominator in my current rig which will be stripped and sold. Just wanted to know if I could put this is my new one and it wouldn't lower the speed of the new stuff?

If you need more details such as speed of the current RAM you will have to let me know how I can find out as it's effort ripping out a stick haha.
 
CPU-Z

The Memory Tab will tell you what settings your RAM is currently running at.

The SPD tab will tell you what settings it's rated for.

You could run all the RAM together but:

1) All the RAM has to run at the same speed, timings and voltage so you'd have to see how different or similar the two sets are.

2) No.1 above could be a faff so unless you're desperate for 20GB instead of 16GB you may want to leave it.

3) Only certain versions of 64 bit Windows support more than 16GB of RAM, what version do you have?

You'll have to post the specs/product details for both sets if you want advice on how compatible they are.
 
I beleive if you mix RAM speeds, it will automatically underclock the faster RAM to speed of the slower RAM.

Back in the days of DDR2 and done this like an idiot, had x3 1gb DDR2 800, bought a cheap 1gb stick and it was 667, never realise for like a whole year lol.
 
Apart from the above complications are you ever likely to run anything that requires more than 16GB ram? 20GB is an enormous amount of memory.
 
for cad/adobe products and users who wish to use ram drives etc, the more the better for me, as a ram drive etc is better and still way faster than any sdd will be for the next few years in raid0 or any other setup even.

h88p://lifehacker.com/5969767/add-a-ram-disk-to-your-computer-for-faster+than+ssd-performance

quote"70 times faster than a regular hard drive or 20 times faster than an SSD" end quote
 
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Haha I probably don't need it but I have it and it's probably not worth selling. 2x 2GB sticks with faster timings. I do music production but I still wouldn't hit 16GB with it.

However I read that this could make overclocking harder so I might not if it's going to complicate things.
 
I am running 4x8GB +2x2GB purely because 4x8GB on its own would not boot properly in my x58 setup, the timings/speed never seems to make that much difference so i am just running it all at the timings of the slower set. The harder part was finding a voltage which would work, the 4x8 were 1.5V while the 2GB stuff I had in before was 1.65V, they all seem to work fine at 1.6V though. So now I have 36GB ram :P

Its still running triple channel fine due to the way x58 memory interleaving works.
 
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