Mix and match memory?

oldestgregg · 5 Jul 2015 at 14:43

So I have 8gb of Patriot viper 2400mhz DDR3 ram and in a couple of recent games its become a bottleneck for my 4770k/Titan X system. I hadnt wanted to add more ram as Ill be upgrading to Skylake so its throwing money at dead tech for me personally,however,I may have to go ahead. I can only find my memory for £100 yet on OCUK I could get 2x4gb of Corsair (same speeds and timings) for £50. Can I mix and match brands or is it not recommended?

Normally my OCD would not allow this under any circumstance but lack of funds and a reluctance to put any more money into a system that wont stay with much longer...well,maybe I can live with it?

Greybeard · 8 Jul 2015 at 00:02

From a manufacturer standpoint, we don't really recommend it due to the fact that they are not tested to work with other kits (even our own), hence we cannot guarantee if they'll play well together with other sets of RAM. It's always going to be a hit and miss.

That said, I am sure that there are ways to make them work, you'll just have to manually tweak some values in the BIOS to make the system stable.

oldestgregg · 8 Jul 2015 at 03:35

Thanks for the reply but I just went ahead and grabbed a couple of 8gb sticks of corsair anyways. Better safe than sorry!

Greybeard · 8 Jul 2015 at 20:16

Yup, no problem. I'm sure that you'll be fine with those sticks. In case you run into any issues, you can always contact me.

snowdog · 8 Jul 2015 at 20:24

My experience is that it's most likely more than fine, used mixed ram in loads of computers without problems, just watch to set them at the speed of the slowest of the bunch and make sure the voltage ranges don't differ too much. Hell in the DDR2 days I have sold pc's with 4 different brands & sizes& speeds of ddr2 sticks that worked fine!

That said, I did come accross some problems occasionally too. There's really just 1 way to find out and that is to try it.

For a laugh, add your patriots to your corsairs so you have 24 total, see how it behaves, if you want to play around a bit of course

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implosiveturnip · 9 Jul 2015 at 16:59

Generally, if you get them on the same volts and timings, you'll be fine. I personally wouldn't do it just as it's asking for headaches really. I was going to suggest grabbing a 16gb kit and just flogging your old mems, but it seems that you're already going that way.

Jim99 · 9 Jul 2015 at 17:08

I've had some really odd problems with RAM before, even when not mixed (e.g. a set that just refused to work in one particular mobo).

Generally though you can find a way to make it work.

zola25 · 12 Jul 2015 at 10:21

To echo what's been said above, I've even had issues running different revisions of the same memory, i.e. same stock code just different revision. I'd always recommend having matched sticks.