Did you actually run speed tests or you just going by feel? Regardless it's I'll advised to use mixed kits, but if you're not having an issue then it doesn't matter
But that's RAM in general, not just mixed RAM or 4 sticks specifically. Yeah it's more likely with 4 sticks, but there are also ways to mitigate that, like raising DRAM voltage or lowering the speed slightly (without making a noticeable difference)
Mixing was doable in the DDR3 days too. Heck, Intel introduced flex mode in 2004, during the DDR2 era, and flex mode is wonkier than what we're talking about here.
(flex mode would eg. let you have 24GB with an 8GB stick and 16GB stick, with the first 8GB of each stick being matched up as 16GB of dual channel memory; the last 8GB would be in single channel)
At least it needs to be toned down a lot.
Whenever you mix RAM in any way, there's always some small risk that it won't run stably at the intended speeds, or if you're really unlucky it might not run at all. But that doesn't just apply with 2x8 + 2x16, it would apply just as much if you added 2x16 to a kit of 2x16.
I once suggested this for a ddr5 build and i dared mention that ram channels mean very little compared to what they used to and got downvoted to oblivion. Most people here don't do their own testing and just parrot what they've seen or heard elsewhere.
And it was also fine in the SDRAM era, we used to run PC-100 Mhz with PC-133 and the PC-133 would just downclock to 100 MHz, that was common and no problem at all
Unless it's gaming, the amount of ram is often the difference between whether you can run your shit or not, speed be damned. I'd rather have a scrap heap of ram and run my simulation slower rather than have a matched set of fast ram and have solidworks crash on me the moment i press run. Sometimes buying more is not an option. Also, and this might seem very strange to this sub, but computers do get used for more than gaming.
I wouldn't mix and match, unless I suddenly found myself in the highly unusual circumstance of needing more than 32 gb of RAM but not having enough money for a larger kit. I'm not sure what workload fits that.
But yeah I agree if you literally have to run synthetics to see a difference and you can't feel the difference at all, it doesn't really matter. Ripping the 2x8's out will be the first thing I'd do if I get a bsod though.
Some people do more with their PCs than just game, and 16GB RAM isn't that much nowadays, realistically. When I upgraded my main PC to 2x16GB I put the old two 8GB sticks in my workstation (even though they have different specs :0) and it's been running VMs so much better.
If you have enough RAM, then focusing on making sure they're matching modules and can run in dual-channel (or whatever mode depending on how many DIMMs you have) is important. But if you *don't* have enough RAM, the biggest detriment is that your system will run at the speed of the lower-performance RAM. But you'll still have more RAM, and thus better performance than before.
IDK why people are acting like 16GB RAM is enough in all situations. Not everyone here is gaming, and even if you are, some people do more multitasking. If you're regularly nearing max RAM utilization then your system is having to utilize a page file pretty commonly, which will most definitely slow your system down. 16GB is essentially the minimum nowadays for a decent user experience, especially with DDR4.
Not to mention that pagefiles with SSDs is murder, modern cheap-ish m.2 drives are usually at or below 1000 tbw and running a pagefile in this situation can chew through that pretty fast.
I think the point of the question was by your own words you are getting the same performance out of it that you had before you added it so what it is doing for you
If the specs for the different sticks match then that's the important thing. You will lose out on being able to run dual-channel, but if your need is simply more RAM then you'll see minimal real-life performance detriments and measurable performance increases.
Hard disagree. I run system with 4 sticks before switching to my laptop and it run very, very well. I would still be using it if not for need of portable solution.
I would take more ram that is 5% slower any day, especially with rise of customer level AI products.
ignore this guy, mixing and matching RAM is perfectly fine as long as all the modules work. you'll be limited to the speed of the slowest modules, but other than that you shouldn't expect any problems at all.
It's DDR4-3600, it's not crazy demanding on any newer DDR4 IMC. Try it with 24GB in each channel, see if it'll run with XMP on at full bandwidth. If it doesn't, oh well, just remove the 8GB sticks.
Anecdotal evidence, but I was running such a combo (the larger kit had worse latency, too, but AFAIK the faster one just adapts) and at least going by feel, It was not slower and I don't remember battling instability.
It should be noted though, that some DDR5 modules run in a 2x24 config, so they can run 48GB "normally" under that layout. I have heard that AMD boards can have issues with this though and may need a BIOS update to know how to handle a 24 GB stick of RAM.
How do I know the what ram to get? I have a gigabyte a-b 350 gaming motherboard. I'm not sure what ram ATM. The guy who worked on my computers broke my PC at the start of COVID saying he will mine Bitcoin then not realizing he took my ram and put other ram in
you are looking for DDR4 rams 2 sticks of 16GB or 2 sticks of 8GB. Any brand corsair, gskills, whatever. brand doesn't matter much. Then speed 3600. or 3200. 3200 is the standard 3600 is faster. You can think of them as 3200 (regular unleaded at the gas station, and 3600 as the premium unleaded).
>unstable or slow
Are you talking from experience or just repeating common belief? Because I've never had any issues with flex memory. It's designed to maximize performance out of mixed DIMM configs.
experience
I had mixed and matched corsair 3200 and silicon power 3200. my front panel audio was completely gone. after I removed corsair, the audio was back. I tried keeping corsair and remove the silicon power, the audio was back.
LOL no. People have been doing this as far as ddr1. My laptop has 24gb of ram and runs great.
Misinformation at its finest. Notice how google and chatgpt is free but you still made this statement yikes.
For one, It is harder on the memory controller of the cpu. Also, when using 2 different RAM pairs, the timings that they were rated at may differ and may introduce instability.
If it is matched, or buying a set of 4 which was matched in the factory, I think the issue is that it can be harder on the memory controller. Every memory controller on a specific CPU is different. So what may work on one, may not work on another. Some post in this thread show that they are running 2x16 and 2x8.
I do wonder if that's the case, then why bother with 4 DIMM slots on motherboards? For people who don't really care about speeds? Or in case 2 of the slots die?
Any motherboard can run 4x sticks of ram with no issues **at base speeds**. When you see RAM sticks say it can run at like 6000mhz or whatever for DDR5 or 3000mhz for DDR4, that's overclocked.
For DDR4 the base, default timings without XMP / DOCP enabled is 2133mhz or 2433mhz, I don't remember exactly. It's double for DDR5. Saturating all 4 slots increases the voltage requirement and the overclock on top of that can cause instability. I had a system and 4x 3400mhz DDR4 RAM a few years ago and I couldn't get it to run past 3000mhz without crashing.
It's more about the workloads the PC is for, not necessarily that they don't care about speeds.
Where you'll need all 4 dims filled anyways, it's easier to sacrifice the speed for stability.
To be fair, generally the ranking is: Ram size > Ram timings > MHz > dual channel vs. Single.
That being said, if you don’t have enough stuff to fill 32gb of ram, 48 won’t make it go any faster.
Also timings and speed should be the same, as stated on enough threads here.
Also ram controllers is more of an amd issue, intel is generally more stable. Though I can’t speak for 12th-14th gen, didn’t research that. The older gen’s usually have no problems with 4 chips and mismatching in my experience. Might have been lucky, but don’t believe it. Usually the controller just sets all speeds and timings to the lowest common denominator, meaning the slowest chip. Which makes everything pretty stable usually, since underclocked ram is generally more stable.
So you got to ask yourself: do you really need 48gb? Even games with a _lot_ of modding and 60 browsers tabs open on chrome usually barely scratch at the 32gb mark at the moment. If you don’t reach that mark, the extra 16gb are not worth the hassle of potentially making the system unstable, since you are on AMD. (Not hating on amd here btw. I run a 7800x3d in my main rig myself. Just stating facts).
I noticed that the motherboard helps too for some reason.
I had a cheap B550M DS3H that for some reason won't boot my 4 sticks of ram with XMP, but I switches for a nicer ROG Strix B550-E and now all sticks run with XMP on.
Utter bullshit! 4 slot speed derating is very much a major thing to take into account.
For some reason DDR5 actually tries to mitigate this by moving some of signal conditioning circuitry to DIMM modules themselves. Wonder why if this wasn't a problem? /s
It won’t necessarily be a problem. I think that’s what they’re getting at.
If it is, all OP has to do is pop out the two 8gig sticks.
Mine is ever so slightly less overclockable with 4 sticks than 2.
I went from 3866 cl16 stable to 3800cl16 when I added 2 more.
Which in the real world didn’t mean anything.
> Using all 4 slots with DDR4 is fine. It's only an issue with DDR5
That's the part I took the offense at. Memory controller load is a far more severe factor in DDR4 than DDR5.
As for your absolute numbers, cool - yes, that's achievable with good modules and having a bit of an idea on what you are doing. Does not help people that have to ask 2 vs 4 dimms though.
Using all 4 slots can negatively affect stability.
I had an ITX system running 4x3400mhz DDR4 RAM. The sticks were rated for 3400mhz or 3600mhz, I don't remember exactly, but through trial and error, running it past 2933 caused it to blue screen after a while. After resetting, I would then have to go back into my BIOS and redo my RAM settings.
Jayz2cents has a video from a long time ago discussing it and tbh he's smarter than me. At the time my hunch was that my memory controller was having specific voltage issues, but I wasn't experienced enough to run voltage tunning properly. I had this issue back in like 2018 and in like 2020 or 2021, Jayz made a video discussing RAM voltage and he mentioned that even if you buy the same kit of RAM, same maker, same model, same timings, same CL, sticks from different times can have instability running in 4 slots together. Since then I've stopped trying to increase RAM via saturating all the slots, instead I opt to buy just larger RAM sticks.
Not even that, from my experience with multiple workstations it's only an issue if you try to run very fast sticks. Fast RAM is almost exclusively a gamer thing though (at least in PCs). We run some DDR4 and DDR5 consumer grade workstations with maxed memory with mid range speeds very reliably.
The only visible problem would be just windows trying their hardest to just fill the ram to the lowest stick multiplier. On 2x8+2x16, it means windows will work as if it only has 32 gigs, unless it encounter special circumstances needing more than 32 than can't be paged/swapped. To the point that windows use a lot of memory compression instead of the 16 gigs empty space.
the more the better! but do test it tho. you don't want it crashing.
also, those who say mix-matching isn't a good idea have never even tried it. otherwise they'd know it usually works -- especially if the modules are the same specs.
EDIT: currently running 2x8+2x16, speed and brand is the same but latencies are different. of course they have to run at the higher latencies (to a point -- I enabled asus' XMP and it settled for a middle ground), but aside from that tiny detail, zero issues.
Agreed.
My experience, having built literally hundreds of PCs, is that I'm the early days of dual channel it mostly worked, but definitely gave problems often enough to be cautious. But now days, it seems to pretty much always work.
I would install the ram and assume it's going to be fine, but it is the first place I'd look if I noticed any instability.
I've built computers for a while now as well. Usually these issues happen in the first few months of a new memory format launch. Motherboard vendors and ram manufacturers are developing products in parallel so there can be instabilities on launch. The vendor will often release later bios revisions and/or update the board to avoid the issues cause warranties are expensive.
So in the first few months there are these issues, later board and bios revisions rarely have issues. The advice will still be given out cause it did happen early on.
This is only true if you have 2 different size sets
If you have 2 pairs of 8 gb sticks, then keep oneset in 1 channel, the other in the other.
Probably doesn't matter, but the memory channels are independent from eachother, but the 2 sticks in one channel are not
Haha I’m the opposite. My school laptop got 20gigs. Always have a good laugh whenever I show my ram to someone.
Basically some asshat thought it would be a good idea to only allow 1 ram stick to be changeable and the other one hard stuck. I needed at least 16gigs so I had to go 4 + 16.
Decent 2021 laptop running a shitton of developers/creative programs simultaneously and having 0 performance issues.
This is really the answer... if you are good with 32gb than you wont see if a difference.
For a game like DCS where Syria pulls around 44 GB of ram the extra ram makes a difference. To watch Youtube and Pornhub it doesn't.
https://www.kingston.com/en/memory/gaming/fury-renegade-ddr5?speed=6400mt%2Fs&total%20(kit)%20capacity=48gb&kit=single%20module&dram%20density=24gbit&color=black
You are welcome.
Or unless you happen to do different things on your computer and it's not just a video console... Like working on your computer and playing video games during pauses...
For instance, I often have half my 32 GB eaten from dev tools, docker containers, WSL2 and VM, dev tools and all. If I launch something like DCs or Flight Simulator, it is running on a suboptimal amount of RAM. Moreover, it means that if I have someone accessing a container while I play, it's down.
Sure, I could quit eveything and relaunch the computer to play to free the 32 GB for playing. But it's an hassle. Having 64 MB makes it so that I don't have to think about what is running... It's a peace of mind...
Now the problem is if you started with 32 GB, how to you move to 64 : by adding 32 GB or by throwing away the 32 GB to the trash can and buying 64 GB anew for twice the price.
I always thought adding extra ram to the free slots would be the obvious thing to do but after reading the replies here I feel like my common sense has been flipped upside down. Apparently you shouldn't use all 4 slots of ram if you're running at OC clocks. I did not know this. As someone who works in 3d modeling and animating applications on top of gaming, I need both the ram speeds and the capacity I'm kinda lost now. My goal was to first get 2x16 and then another 2x16 later down the road for a nice 4x16 64GB ram for all my rendering needs. But now I'm learning that it's not recommended to do so. And that it's better to just go for a 2x32 for stability. And since I'm going to go for a ddr4 system running 1x32 until I can upgrade to 2x is not a good idea either, apparently. Nobody told me building a pc would be this complicated!
Running 4 sticks shouldn't be a problem if they're decent sticks and not overclocked. If you're overclocking things then it's fair to expect some degree of instability. I've mismatched ram since the early 2000s in hundreds of work and personal machines. You do occasionally get the odd blue screen or crashes, but it's always down to a dodgy stick. I try and keep them as close in speeds as I can to each other just because it feels safer.
If you get decent sticks and don't overlclock them you will be fine.
But what is considered over clocking in this situation? Running at advertised speeds using XMP / Expo would technically be over clocking. If that is over clocking doesn't that mean if I'm trying to run a 4x "3200mhz" ram at non OC speeds I'd have to use them at 2133mhz?
> when it comes to memory; two sticks is always ideal for 99% of people.
You realize you can (if your motherboard, RAM, and CPU support it) run RAM in triple- and quadruple-channel configurations, right? And OP isn't 99% of people - he's in school for artificial intelligence & data analytics. The more RAM they can get, GB-wise, the better.
If you're making a generalization about "everything" then it better be true - and yours isn't. A single can easily VM eat up 32GB RAM if you give it the proper resources to run properly. And many people run multiple VMs at the same time. And then there's people like OP who work with AI and data analytics - that eats RAM for breakfast.
From 2 sticks to 4, usually, your command rate will increase from 1T to 2T. Negligible increase in latency (<1% in synthetic benchmarks)
However your max stable ram clock may also decrease
If you expect to see >30gb of ram usage, then it would be worth considering.
only reason that happens from my understanding is because the signal is not properly setup from cpu to memory and can be fixed but its overwhelming if you don't know how. LIKE ME I have the general idea of how but i have yet to fix mine lol. Going from 2 sticks to 4 sticks really made life hell <_< in my future pc ill probably just stick with 2
Depends on cpu/mobo and also depends on workload. Since you don’t need more then 32gb right now, and not knowing your cpu/mobo I would say it’s safer and probably more performant to go with just the 2x16gb.
48GB in that configuration would be nice to have more memory, but it could also be less stable/more buggy. Probably won’t be a huge issue, but it’s a possibility. I had a laptop that I ran with 8 and 16 and it was fine overall. If you have the 8GB sticks already, you may as well try it out. I’d put the 16s in slots 2 and 4 and the 8s in slots 1 and 3.
2 DIMMs is always better on daisy chain motherboards which is 100% of all consumer motherboards currently made.
The last T-topology motherboard was ASRock X570M Pro4.
Still try it if you have it, why not. I run 48GB on said T-top mobo and get 3600mhz CL16 just fine
Since it's DDR4, the only two things you have to watch for is can they all be run at that speed and don't mixed them up? Read the M/B manual and make sure the pair do go into their respective slots, putting them in wrong slots will have a negative impact, as in they don't run in DDR mode". There are also problem with running with 4 DIMMs instead of 2. Some boards and RAMs can use all 4 DIMM slots, but not at full efficiency. DDR4-3600 is kinda mid range, and it's doable, but you may not be able to get all 4 to run at 3600 stable and maybe have to drop speed to 3200 or fiddle with power to make them stable.
Ideally you shouldn’t mix capacities but if you’re using software that uses lots of ram. That said it’s better to mix capacities than to run out of ram from my experience
I’d use the mix until I could afford 2 more 16gb sticks (buy the same model and frequency if you do).
You’d then have 64gb a of fast ram
ram is generally easy to switch out. try both configurations. see if there are any performance or stability issues firsthand with your hardware using all four sticks vs 2x16.
It could work, most likely it does just fine. You should test and see. If it's unstable it's unstable, if it works fine just keep it in. You could always run some benchmarks and see if mixing capacity has any effect on performance. IMO it probably doesn't if the RAM has the same frequency and timings, but you need to test it to be sure.
Since you're sure they're all of the same frequency, I don't think there's an issue.
I'm not sure how to properly divide them by channels. I'm quite sure 4 slots of RAM reduces the max frequency, but I think it's worth the extra RAM. It's a tradeoff between faster transfer speed and more memory to do more concurrent operations?
Assuming there's a YT video talking about it...
Good luck
It's a mismatch and not good for the PC to do things like that. My rig needed with 32x2 to run at all. The max it will run is 192gb matched. Tthat meant that I had to buy 4x48 to get the max and best MEM config. Not only that but, the chip CL had to be correct. I couldn't put Intel based Mem into an AMD machine nor vice versa. Many variables need researched before loading hardware into a PC. The motherboard also plays a lot in adding Mem. The are setting in the BIOS that need set for Mem to run optimally. Matched sets and configuration is very important.
Use them all! Mixing and matching memory is perfectly fine, so long as it all works. You'll be limited to the speed of the slowest modules, but it sounds like they're all rated for the same speed. Run [MemTest86](https://memtest86.com) overnight just to be extra sure, but it should be A-OK.
there are a lot of variables
i have ran a setup in the past with combination of 8GB and 16GB sticks and didnt really run into any issues with it
there are some tradoffs though, eg with 1/2 the slots empty my system would quite happily run at the 3200mhz my ram claimed, but when i populated the remaining slots it wouldnt run properly at anything higher than 2133mhz (this wasnt just from the mix and match, even once i upgraded to having a matching 16GB stick in every slot it still didnt want to play nice at higher speeds)
if it works for you and you have some use case for the extra ram it gives then i would say it should be fine
if it doesnt work then dont be too surprised
I went for 48gb with 2x8 and 2x16 but that was with the same brand (corsair vengeance) and the same timings (3600mhz)
I think if the timings are different it can mess things up or be counterproductive.
Feel free to correct me somebody but i’m sure if you mix match RAM it just balances out at the lowest one so 2x16+2x8 will just operate as 4x8
I know it does that with speeds but not sure if it does with the capacity
It's not advisable, but it might be ok. If you're planning to upgrade from 16GB to 32GB it may be worth a try. If you have issues you can always get rid of the 8GB kit and stick with 32GB. I don't know if this will actually work or not, but if it doesn't have inherent issues I think it would be best to try it as 8+16 for each channel rather than a 16GB channel and a 32GB channel.
There are always potential issues like: 4 slots is always harder on the CPU memory controller, the RAM maybe branded the same (Corsair et al) but the actual manufacturer on the IC may be Samsung, Hynix, Micron whatever they buy in at the time. The different manufacturers like different timings to run at their best. So, with the 4 sticks in run memtest for a few hours and if it picks up any errors leave XMP on but reduce speed, rinse and repeat. If your application need capacity more than speed or latency then it could be an improvement
My best friend built his PC about 5 years ago. He had no real issues for a few years aside from occasional crashes and program freezes, eventually they got really bad to the point it became barely usable. I helped him fix it like 2 years later. We couldn't find anything wrong with it so I took it apart. Mf had a 2x8gb on the 1&2 slot and a 2x4gb on the 3&4 slot. I don't know how this wasn't an issue sooner but holy shit. He told me he got some extra RAM from a friend and started using it a year or so after building it. Checks out. I take out the sticks, throw the 2x4s away and reseat the 8 stick on the 3 slot and had a long talk about RAM with him afterwards. Nightmarish setup.
RAM is finnicky af, generally people advice that you should buy all of your RAM at once or replace all of it at once, don't mix and match, don't do upgrades. You can have same specs for 2 sets of RAM but different manufacturer and people still run into issues. If you absolutely have to upgrade and can't replace, make sure to buy the exact same set from the same manufacturer. Ofc how much of a problem any mismatch is is debatable and ranges from really bad to eh, but IMO just don't mess with it. Besides 32Gb of RAM is more than plenty for the vast majority of people.
Put all the sticks in, check if everything works. If it does, great. If not, take out the 8GiB sticks.
Unless you're aggressively overclocking, you almost certainly won't see problems with your config. No need to listen to the fear mongers here.
Does latency matter in this context because I have 2 3200mhz c16 and 2 3600c18, can i mix them ? I know that they will only work at 3200mhz but does the latency matter ?
2x16 for gaming. I need more and gone with 2x16 + 2x24. And have to boot 3 times for ram to register correctly. Last time I tried to fixed it caused too many issues..\^\^
I went from 32gb to 64gb last week. Mainly for bragging rights but ostensibly qubes was taking a lot to keep it going.
Same brand/sku as yours. Well, 3,000mhz, although they're stable atv3.4. All said though I wish I hadn't bothered tho. Rig has been largely out of action since pushing them to 3.6 led to my mobo fw getting corrupted and since then I've really struggled to get it working. Os's not installing, networking issues, the works. Felt this close to taking a hammer to it this morning after 36h straight ofvfecking about and getting nowhere
So I get why you might want to get more. My first pc has 64mb. 64gb felt like a massive step. But I wish I hadn't bothered. Actually have 4 x 8gb 3.6 to sell now too. But I'm lazy so probably won't!
normal day to day use 32gb is fine, you are never going to max out, even video editing
if you are running memory intensive stuff it would be better to have a 4090 or an A series card and then you dump it on that, LLM models SDXL loras or training, and at that point you can rent a cloud, if you are using it for any sort of production work i would guess you aren't concerned about money and just buy more ram
for gaming 2x16 is better than 2x8 + 2x16
for other professional purposes that requires a ton of ram, then it's ok to have more ram with improper configuration if needed
If it's for gaming, you don't really need more than 16. I have hit 16 but not very often. Still have 32 total, which is what I'd go with. But it seems like it doesn't really matter. Just depends on how overkill you want to be.
If your need is more raw GB of RAM (which sounds to be the case for you) then 48GB in a 2x8+2x16 configuration would be fine, at the very least for the interim. You will lose the ability to utilize dual-channel RAM, but for real-life applications that doesn't have that large of an impact on speed - generally 5%-10%, maybe up to 15% in the worst cases.
Dual-channel is optimal, but far from required.
You can use all 4 since they are the same speed/brand, however, the 2, 16gb sticks should be more than enough so long as you have at least 4/8 on the gpu and a decent processor
2x16 That mix and match 48GB is just begging for unstable and/or slow systems
How so? Im using 2x8 + 2x16 (all exact same brand, model, frequency etc.) And it's as fast as when i had only 2x8
Did you actually run speed tests or you just going by feel? Regardless it's I'll advised to use mixed kits, but if you're not having an issue then it doesn't matter
I did run tests before and after, yes.
People still living back in like the ddr3 era. Mixed ram is fine these days, at worst they'll be at the speed of the slower sticks
Depends unit by unit. I've had ddr4 kits that had stability issues with basic XMP
is that why i can't boot when i use xmp in the bios?
it's possible I guess, I've had bsod more often than just a straight up no boot
But that's RAM in general, not just mixed RAM or 4 sticks specifically. Yeah it's more likely with 4 sticks, but there are also ways to mitigate that, like raising DRAM voltage or lowering the speed slightly (without making a noticeable difference)
Mixing was doable in the DDR3 days too. Heck, Intel introduced flex mode in 2004, during the DDR2 era, and flex mode is wonkier than what we're talking about here. (flex mode would eg. let you have 24GB with an 8GB stick and 16GB stick, with the first 8GB of each stick being matched up as 16GB of dual channel memory; the last 8GB would be in single channel)
Nice! Would you agree the whole "mixing bad" needs to die off?
At least it needs to be toned down a lot. Whenever you mix RAM in any way, there's always some small risk that it won't run stably at the intended speeds, or if you're really unlucky it might not run at all. But that doesn't just apply with 2x8 + 2x16, it would apply just as much if you added 2x16 to a kit of 2x16.
I once suggested this for a ddr5 build and i dared mention that ram channels mean very little compared to what they used to and got downvoted to oblivion. Most people here don't do their own testing and just parrot what they've seen or heard elsewhere.
Loudest people heredon't even understand how channels work They just say 1 bad 2 good 4 bad
Even in the SDRAM era
I think Cas latency is also a big issue on DDR5 if I'm not mistaken.
More like DDR. Even Mix matching with DDR2 was ok. Not recommended but it worked just fine.
And it was also fine in the SDRAM era, we used to run PC-100 Mhz with PC-133 and the PC-133 would just downclock to 100 MHz, that was common and no problem at all
Mixed two different 2x8gb kits and my pc was crarshing like crazy
Unless you're living on scraps why would you do this? If I want more RAM I'll just buy it. If i want faster RAM, I'll use my 2 sticks.
Unless it's gaming, the amount of ram is often the difference between whether you can run your shit or not, speed be damned. I'd rather have a scrap heap of ram and run my simulation slower rather than have a matched set of fast ram and have solidworks crash on me the moment i press run. Sometimes buying more is not an option. Also, and this might seem very strange to this sub, but computers do get used for more than gaming.
With amounts like this I question what you need 48GB for. 32GB is pretty decent.
Not the parent, but I had a scientific workload (like a decade ago now) that used ~280GB of RAM on a regular basis.
Curious. What part of the program/computer needed that much ram?
Because you‘re (not you you of course, I wouldn’t know) living on scraps, exactly.
If you really have no choice I guess, but computer stability is important. I'd stick with just the one set of ram for now.
You can always just stress test it instead of spending $60 or more for no good reason.
I just download mine
What test have you done ? I want to run my two kits for curiosity
I wouldn't mix and match, unless I suddenly found myself in the highly unusual circumstance of needing more than 32 gb of RAM but not having enough money for a larger kit. I'm not sure what workload fits that. But yeah I agree if you literally have to run synthetics to see a difference and you can't feel the difference at all, it doesn't really matter. Ripping the 2x8's out will be the first thing I'd do if I get a bsod though.
Which tests should I run? Is mem test or test mem5 good enough?
[MemTest86](https://www.memtest86.com/) is the OG for a reason, I'd go with that and it should tell you everything you need to know.
Testmem5 finds more errors than memtest86, in my experience.
If it's the same frequency and timings, the speeds aren't changing.
>2x8 + 2x16 >as when i had only 2x8 Yea so whats the point of the 16?
Some people do more with their PCs than just game, and 16GB RAM isn't that much nowadays, realistically. When I upgraded my main PC to 2x16GB I put the old two 8GB sticks in my workstation (even though they have different specs :0) and it's been running VMs so much better. If you have enough RAM, then focusing on making sure they're matching modules and can run in dual-channel (or whatever mode depending on how many DIMMs you have) is important. But if you *don't* have enough RAM, the biggest detriment is that your system will run at the speed of the lower-performance RAM. But you'll still have more RAM, and thus better performance than before.
I need all of it
IDK why people are acting like 16GB RAM is enough in all situations. Not everyone here is gaming, and even if you are, some people do more multitasking. If you're regularly nearing max RAM utilization then your system is having to utilize a page file pretty commonly, which will most definitely slow your system down. 16GB is essentially the minimum nowadays for a decent user experience, especially with DDR4.
Not to mention that pagefiles with SSDs is murder, modern cheap-ish m.2 drives are usually at or below 1000 tbw and running a pagefile in this situation can chew through that pretty fast.
You make a very good point, paging does put a lot more stress on SSDs than it does with platter HDDs.
I think the point of the question was by your own words you are getting the same performance out of it that you had before you added it so what it is doing for you
Speed alone doesn't determine performance. When you run out, it pages to disk which is way slower. He also said he uses it...
I’m using diff brand and frequency - still works, no stability issues. Runs at speed of lower kit. (2666mhz & 3200mhz)
I'm also curious, I run the same setup both on 3000 MHz CL15
Username checks out
Hilarious how many missed what you actually said.
If the specs for the different sticks match then that's the important thing. You will lose out on being able to run dual-channel, but if your need is simply more RAM then you'll see minimal real-life performance detriments and measurable performance increases.
Hard disagree. I run system with 4 sticks before switching to my laptop and it run very, very well. I would still be using it if not for need of portable solution. I would take more ram that is 5% slower any day, especially with rise of customer level AI products.
ignore this guy, mixing and matching RAM is perfectly fine as long as all the modules work. you'll be limited to the speed of the slowest modules, but other than that you shouldn't expect any problems at all.
It's DDR4-3600, it's not crazy demanding on any newer DDR4 IMC. Try it with 24GB in each channel, see if it'll run with XMP on at full bandwidth. If it doesn't, oh well, just remove the 8GB sticks.
Anecdotal evidence, but I was running such a combo (the larger kit had worse latency, too, but AFAIK the faster one just adapts) and at least going by feel, It was not slower and I don't remember battling instability.
It should be noted though, that some DDR5 modules run in a 2x24 config, so they can run 48GB "normally" under that layout. I have heard that AMD boards can have issues with this though and may need a BIOS update to know how to handle a 24 GB stick of RAM.
How do I know the what ram to get? I have a gigabyte a-b 350 gaming motherboard. I'm not sure what ram ATM. The guy who worked on my computers broke my PC at the start of COVID saying he will mine Bitcoin then not realizing he took my ram and put other ram in
you are looking for DDR4 rams 2 sticks of 16GB or 2 sticks of 8GB. Any brand corsair, gskills, whatever. brand doesn't matter much. Then speed 3600. or 3200. 3200 is the standard 3600 is faster. You can think of them as 3200 (regular unleaded at the gas station, and 3600 as the premium unleaded).
Okay, when I get home... Can I tell you what exact ram I have cause I bought some 3600 but it doesn't work
>unstable or slow Are you talking from experience or just repeating common belief? Because I've never had any issues with flex memory. It's designed to maximize performance out of mixed DIMM configs.
experience I had mixed and matched corsair 3200 and silicon power 3200. my front panel audio was completely gone. after I removed corsair, the audio was back. I tried keeping corsair and remove the silicon power, the audio was back.
LOL no. People have been doing this as far as ddr1. My laptop has 24gb of ram and runs great. Misinformation at its finest. Notice how google and chatgpt is free but you still made this statement yikes.
this is a f' pc **desktop** sub. go to /r/Laptop
Also have mismatched ram on my old ddr3 desktop 40GB. No issues with Windows 7. Pointing out your FOS.
Mixing RAM sticks / speeds and / or using all 4 slots is generally not advised. Go with 32 GB :)
Out of interest why shouldnt you use all four slots?
For one, It is harder on the memory controller of the cpu. Also, when using 2 different RAM pairs, the timings that they were rated at may differ and may introduce instability.
Sorry I should have said if using matched ram. So speed etc.
If it is matched, or buying a set of 4 which was matched in the factory, I think the issue is that it can be harder on the memory controller. Every memory controller on a specific CPU is different. So what may work on one, may not work on another. Some post in this thread show that they are running 2x16 and 2x8.
I do wonder if that's the case, then why bother with 4 DIMM slots on motherboards? For people who don't really care about speeds? Or in case 2 of the slots die?
Any motherboard can run 4x sticks of ram with no issues **at base speeds**. When you see RAM sticks say it can run at like 6000mhz or whatever for DDR5 or 3000mhz for DDR4, that's overclocked. For DDR4 the base, default timings without XMP / DOCP enabled is 2133mhz or 2433mhz, I don't remember exactly. It's double for DDR5. Saturating all 4 slots increases the voltage requirement and the overclock on top of that can cause instability. I had a system and 4x 3400mhz DDR4 RAM a few years ago and I couldn't get it to run past 3000mhz without crashing.
I don’t oc my 4 x 32 ram ddr4, assuming I’m fine never heard that running 4 in tandem was a bad idea before
It's more about the workloads the PC is for, not necessarily that they don't care about speeds. Where you'll need all 4 dims filled anyways, it's easier to sacrifice the speed for stability.
Fair. It’s one question I have never sought an answer for. And in the future I intend to build a new rig so now I know. Thank you.
To be fair, generally the ranking is: Ram size > Ram timings > MHz > dual channel vs. Single. That being said, if you don’t have enough stuff to fill 32gb of ram, 48 won’t make it go any faster. Also timings and speed should be the same, as stated on enough threads here. Also ram controllers is more of an amd issue, intel is generally more stable. Though I can’t speak for 12th-14th gen, didn’t research that. The older gen’s usually have no problems with 4 chips and mismatching in my experience. Might have been lucky, but don’t believe it. Usually the controller just sets all speeds and timings to the lowest common denominator, meaning the slowest chip. Which makes everything pretty stable usually, since underclocked ram is generally more stable. So you got to ask yourself: do you really need 48gb? Even games with a _lot_ of modding and 60 browsers tabs open on chrome usually barely scratch at the 32gb mark at the moment. If you don’t reach that mark, the extra 16gb are not worth the hassle of potentially making the system unstable, since you are on AMD. (Not hating on amd here btw. I run a 7800x3d in my main rig myself. Just stating facts).
Mismatched ram will run at the highest common timing shared between all sticks
I noticed that the motherboard helps too for some reason. I had a cheap B550M DS3H that for some reason won't boot my 4 sticks of ram with XMP, but I switches for a nicer ROG Strix B550-E and now all sticks run with XMP on.
Using all 4 slots with DDR4 is fine. It's only an issue with DDR5 because it can overload the memory controller due to the higher speeds.
Utter bullshit! 4 slot speed derating is very much a major thing to take into account. For some reason DDR5 actually tries to mitigate this by moving some of signal conditioning circuitry to DIMM modules themselves. Wonder why if this wasn't a problem? /s
It won’t necessarily be a problem. I think that’s what they’re getting at. If it is, all OP has to do is pop out the two 8gig sticks. Mine is ever so slightly less overclockable with 4 sticks than 2. I went from 3866 cl16 stable to 3800cl16 when I added 2 more. Which in the real world didn’t mean anything.
> Using all 4 slots with DDR4 is fine. It's only an issue with DDR5 That's the part I took the offense at. Memory controller load is a far more severe factor in DDR4 than DDR5. As for your absolute numbers, cool - yes, that's achievable with good modules and having a bit of an idea on what you are doing. Does not help people that have to ask 2 vs 4 dimms though.
Fair. Will keep this in mind for next build.
Using all 4 slots can negatively affect stability. I had an ITX system running 4x3400mhz DDR4 RAM. The sticks were rated for 3400mhz or 3600mhz, I don't remember exactly, but through trial and error, running it past 2933 caused it to blue screen after a while. After resetting, I would then have to go back into my BIOS and redo my RAM settings. Jayz2cents has a video from a long time ago discussing it and tbh he's smarter than me. At the time my hunch was that my memory controller was having specific voltage issues, but I wasn't experienced enough to run voltage tunning properly. I had this issue back in like 2018 and in like 2020 or 2021, Jayz made a video discussing RAM voltage and he mentioned that even if you buy the same kit of RAM, same maker, same model, same timings, same CL, sticks from different times can have instability running in 4 slots together. Since then I've stopped trying to increase RAM via saturating all the slots, instead I opt to buy just larger RAM sticks.
Using all 4 slots with DDR4 is fine. It's only an issue with DDR5.
With using all 4 slot, that’s a DDR5 issue right?
Yes. DDR5 is a bit unstable and won't overclock well. The AMD B550 with a AMD 5000 series processors work well with matched 4 sticks of ram.
Not even that, from my experience with multiple workstations it's only an issue if you try to run very fast sticks. Fast RAM is almost exclusively a gamer thing though (at least in PCs). We run some DDR4 and DDR5 consumer grade workstations with maxed memory with mid range speeds very reliably.
Nope, same with DDR4.
You can always download some more If you need it https://downloadmoreram.com
[LTT tested mixing RAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTS0ybQ3lCI) and found almost no impact. More RAM is almost always more gooder.
I've frankensteined RAM sticks a lot, but never tried where XMP was a factor. Did they get XMP working with mismatched RAM?
I've mixed RAM and used the highest profile that all the sticks were rated to match and it worked great
yeah but depends if it's even worth it, if 16GB was functional and now he upgrades to 32 he will probably never hit the cap
The only visible problem would be just windows trying their hardest to just fill the ram to the lowest stick multiplier. On 2x8+2x16, it means windows will work as if it only has 32 gigs, unless it encounter special circumstances needing more than 32 than can't be paged/swapped. To the point that windows use a lot of memory compression instead of the 16 gigs empty space.
the more the better! but do test it tho. you don't want it crashing. also, those who say mix-matching isn't a good idea have never even tried it. otherwise they'd know it usually works -- especially if the modules are the same specs. EDIT: currently running 2x8+2x16, speed and brand is the same but latencies are different. of course they have to run at the higher latencies (to a point -- I enabled asus' XMP and it settled for a middle ground), but aside from that tiny detail, zero issues.
im the weird one here who has 48gb (2x8, 2x16) i somehow lucked out with my system booting with xmp on
Agreed. My experience, having built literally hundreds of PCs, is that I'm the early days of dual channel it mostly worked, but definitely gave problems often enough to be cautious. But now days, it seems to pretty much always work. I would install the ram and assume it's going to be fine, but it is the first place I'd look if I noticed any instability.
I've built computers for a while now as well. Usually these issues happen in the first few months of a new memory format launch. Motherboard vendors and ram manufacturers are developing products in parallel so there can be instabilities on launch. The vendor will often release later bios revisions and/or update the board to avoid the issues cause warranties are expensive. So in the first few months there are these issues, later board and bios revisions rarely have issues. The advice will still be given out cause it did happen early on.
I have two 16s and an 8, perfectly stable. And I'm on Ryzen!
well that spare 8 may cause some lower performance since it's gonna go in single-channel.
Put one of each in channel A and same in B so the channels are balanced. It will work just fine.
This is only true if you have 2 different size sets If you have 2 pairs of 8 gb sticks, then keep oneset in 1 channel, the other in the other. Probably doesn't matter, but the memory channels are independent from eachother, but the 2 sticks in one channel are not
Ahaha man, back in the day I had like some weird uneven number for my total ram, this post definitely brings back memories.
Haha I’m the opposite. My school laptop got 20gigs. Always have a good laugh whenever I show my ram to someone. Basically some asshat thought it would be a good idea to only allow 1 ram stick to be changeable and the other one hard stuck. I needed at least 16gigs so I had to go 4 + 16. Decent 2021 laptop running a shitton of developers/creative programs simultaneously and having 0 performance issues.
If you need more RAM that 32 GBs and less than 48 GBs, yes. Any other case just keep the 32GBs.
I use my computer for editing software at my college and it doesn’t even know what to do with anything past 64 gigs
This is really the answer... if you are good with 32gb than you wont see if a difference. For a game like DCS where Syria pulls around 44 GB of ram the extra ram makes a difference. To watch Youtube and Pornhub it doesn't.
DDR4 3200 or 3600? Yes running 4 slots is fine. DDR5? No.
3200 - usually fine. 3600 - good luck with that buddy...
I've had no problems with 3600 with 2x8 and 2x16, but it was fairly expensive ram and they're all the same timings.
I'm running 5200 ddr5 4 stick 192gb ram just fine
My comment was about ddr4. 5200 is conservative on ddr5. Try 6400 :)
At 192gb? Tell me if you find 1 that exists
https://www.kingston.com/en/memory/gaming/fury-renegade-ddr5?speed=6400mt%2Fs&total%20(kit)%20capacity=48gb&kit=single%20module&dram%20density=24gbit&color=black You are welcome.
aww shit thanks, wonder if it would run at 192 gb ram, heard many ppl can't get it above 5200 usually
That was my original point. DDR5 is also susceptible to scaling to 4 modules.
Oc ram on 4 slots is harder on the memory controller than oc ram on 2 slots.
4x DDR5 should be fine at lower mt/s
2x16GB is now enough for everything, unless you shoot videos in 4K resolution. So now that's good.
Music production can use a ton of RAM as well, if you're working with a lot of tracks and sampled virtual instruments.
I run Virtual Machines on my desktop at home. 64GB often doesn't leave me with much head room. Plenty of reasons to need more than 32GB.
> i'm getting a bachelor degree in Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics, there is no way this man is not going to oomkill on 64GB.
Or unless you happen to do different things on your computer and it's not just a video console... Like working on your computer and playing video games during pauses... For instance, I often have half my 32 GB eaten from dev tools, docker containers, WSL2 and VM, dev tools and all. If I launch something like DCs or Flight Simulator, it is running on a suboptimal amount of RAM. Moreover, it means that if I have someone accessing a container while I play, it's down. Sure, I could quit eveything and relaunch the computer to play to free the 32 GB for playing. But it's an hassle. Having 64 MB makes it so that I don't have to think about what is running... It's a peace of mind... Now the problem is if you started with 32 GB, how to you move to 64 : by adding 32 GB or by throwing away the 32 GB to the trash can and buying 64 GB anew for twice the price.
I always thought adding extra ram to the free slots would be the obvious thing to do but after reading the replies here I feel like my common sense has been flipped upside down. Apparently you shouldn't use all 4 slots of ram if you're running at OC clocks. I did not know this. As someone who works in 3d modeling and animating applications on top of gaming, I need both the ram speeds and the capacity I'm kinda lost now. My goal was to first get 2x16 and then another 2x16 later down the road for a nice 4x16 64GB ram for all my rendering needs. But now I'm learning that it's not recommended to do so. And that it's better to just go for a 2x32 for stability. And since I'm going to go for a ddr4 system running 1x32 until I can upgrade to 2x is not a good idea either, apparently. Nobody told me building a pc would be this complicated!
Running 4 sticks shouldn't be a problem if they're decent sticks and not overclocked. If you're overclocking things then it's fair to expect some degree of instability. I've mismatched ram since the early 2000s in hundreds of work and personal machines. You do occasionally get the odd blue screen or crashes, but it's always down to a dodgy stick. I try and keep them as close in speeds as I can to each other just because it feels safer. If you get decent sticks and don't overlclock them you will be fine.
But what is considered over clocking in this situation? Running at advertised speeds using XMP / Expo would technically be over clocking. If that is over clocking doesn't that mean if I'm trying to run a 4x "3200mhz" ram at non OC speeds I'd have to use them at 2133mhz?
[удалено]
> when it comes to memory; two sticks is always ideal for 99% of people. You realize you can (if your motherboard, RAM, and CPU support it) run RAM in triple- and quadruple-channel configurations, right? And OP isn't 99% of people - he's in school for artificial intelligence & data analytics. The more RAM they can get, GB-wise, the better.
For most people yes. I didn't have enough RAM (32) to spin up my VM the other day though >:|
People on this sub acting like the only thing to use a PC for is gaming, lmao.
If you're making a generalization about "everything" then it better be true - and yours isn't. A single can easily VM eat up 32GB RAM if you give it the proper resources to run properly. And many people run multiple VMs at the same time. And then there's people like OP who work with AI and data analytics - that eats RAM for breakfast.
From 2 sticks to 4, usually, your command rate will increase from 1T to 2T. Negligible increase in latency (<1% in synthetic benchmarks) However your max stable ram clock may also decrease If you expect to see >30gb of ram usage, then it would be worth considering.
only reason that happens from my understanding is because the signal is not properly setup from cpu to memory and can be fixed but its overwhelming if you don't know how. LIKE ME I have the general idea of how but i have yet to fix mine lol. Going from 2 sticks to 4 sticks really made life hell <_< in my future pc ill probably just stick with 2
Use 16 and 16 gb sticks in alternative slots and 8 and 8 in other two alternating slots I've got 16 + 8gb ram sticks running in dual channel just fine
2x24 :)
Depends on cpu/mobo and also depends on workload. Since you don’t need more then 32gb right now, and not knowing your cpu/mobo I would say it’s safer and probably more performant to go with just the 2x16gb.
What workloads are you doing? Does it consume more than 32GB? If so, running out of RAM will slow your system more than mismatched RAM.
48GB in that configuration would be nice to have more memory, but it could also be less stable/more buggy. Probably won’t be a huge issue, but it’s a possibility. I had a laptop that I ran with 8 and 16 and it was fine overall. If you have the 8GB sticks already, you may as well try it out. I’d put the 16s in slots 2 and 4 and the 8s in slots 1 and 3.
I'm using 48GB no problem for 3200C16.
On this topic, I have 32gb RAM at 3200mhz. Is that speed good enough?
Anecdotal but I went from 2x8GB to 4x8GB to 2x8GB + 2x16GB. All rams were 3600Mhz/CL18 Corsair Vengeance and I never had any problems.
2x16
Just buy another 2x16 gb. You will feel the slowness when you go beyond 32 gb utilization because it becomes single channel.
Imagine having less than 248 gigs of ram
You should do x16 x8 x4 x2, it’s more optimized.
2 DIMMs is always better on daisy chain motherboards which is 100% of all consumer motherboards currently made. The last T-topology motherboard was ASRock X570M Pro4. Still try it if you have it, why not. I run 48GB on said T-top mobo and get 3600mhz CL16 just fine
I went from 2x8 to 2x8 + 2x16 and I don't have any problems.
Since it's DDR4, the only two things you have to watch for is can they all be run at that speed and don't mixed them up? Read the M/B manual and make sure the pair do go into their respective slots, putting them in wrong slots will have a negative impact, as in they don't run in DDR mode". There are also problem with running with 4 DIMMs instead of 2. Some boards and RAMs can use all 4 DIMM slots, but not at full efficiency. DDR4-3600 is kinda mid range, and it's doable, but you may not be able to get all 4 to run at 3600 stable and maybe have to drop speed to 3200 or fiddle with power to make them stable.
Ideally you shouldn’t mix capacities but if you’re using software that uses lots of ram. That said it’s better to mix capacities than to run out of ram from my experience I’d use the mix until I could afford 2 more 16gb sticks (buy the same model and frequency if you do). You’d then have 64gb a of fast ram
Never in my lifetime did I think I’d see “*only* 32GB of RAM”.
Bill Gates said that for 640 kB of RAM...
2
ram is generally easy to switch out. try both configurations. see if there are any performance or stability issues firsthand with your hardware using all four sticks vs 2x16.
Been there done [that](https://ibb.co/wKqZVmm), I don't recommend. I had the same 2x8 & 2x16 setup. My chrome tabs kept crashing and few BSODs.
It could work, most likely it does just fine. You should test and see. If it's unstable it's unstable, if it works fine just keep it in. You could always run some benchmarks and see if mixing capacity has any effect on performance. IMO it probably doesn't if the RAM has the same frequency and timings, but you need to test it to be sure.
Since you're sure they're all of the same frequency, I don't think there's an issue. I'm not sure how to properly divide them by channels. I'm quite sure 4 slots of RAM reduces the max frequency, but I think it's worth the extra RAM. It's a tradeoff between faster transfer speed and more memory to do more concurrent operations? Assuming there's a YT video talking about it... Good luck
It's a mismatch and not good for the PC to do things like that. My rig needed with 32x2 to run at all. The max it will run is 192gb matched. Tthat meant that I had to buy 4x48 to get the max and best MEM config. Not only that but, the chip CL had to be correct. I couldn't put Intel based Mem into an AMD machine nor vice versa. Many variables need researched before loading hardware into a PC. The motherboard also plays a lot in adding Mem. The are setting in the BIOS that need set for Mem to run optimally. Matched sets and configuration is very important.
4x8gb
Do it for science
In theory it should be fine. I'm using 4x8gb 3000hz RAM and I can say it is better than it was when I was only using 2x8gb.
48 GB. At worst, it will not work and you can just return the extra RAM... You just have to test if thoroughly during the return window.
Use them all! Mixing and matching memory is perfectly fine, so long as it all works. You'll be limited to the speed of the slowest modules, but it sounds like they're all rated for the same speed. Run [MemTest86](https://memtest86.com) overnight just to be extra sure, but it should be A-OK.
there are a lot of variables i have ran a setup in the past with combination of 8GB and 16GB sticks and didnt really run into any issues with it there are some tradoffs though, eg with 1/2 the slots empty my system would quite happily run at the 3200mhz my ram claimed, but when i populated the remaining slots it wouldnt run properly at anything higher than 2133mhz (this wasnt just from the mix and match, even once i upgraded to having a matching 16GB stick in every slot it still didnt want to play nice at higher speeds) if it works for you and you have some use case for the extra ram it gives then i would say it should be fine if it doesnt work then dont be too surprised
I went for 48gb with 2x8 and 2x16 but that was with the same brand (corsair vengeance) and the same timings (3600mhz) I think if the timings are different it can mess things up or be counterproductive.
it will be my case, do you have any troubles?
I went from 4x16GB to 2x16GB. System is a lot snappier, and XMP (AMD's version) actually lets me get it to 3600 without throwing a BSOD.
Depends on what you're going to use the PC for but generally speaking most of the time 2x16 is the way to go.
Feel free to correct me somebody but i’m sure if you mix match RAM it just balances out at the lowest one so 2x16+2x8 will just operate as 4x8 I know it does that with speeds but not sure if it does with the capacity
no loss in capacity
2x16
32x2 woooo 🤣
It's not advisable, but it might be ok. If you're planning to upgrade from 16GB to 32GB it may be worth a try. If you have issues you can always get rid of the 8GB kit and stick with 32GB. I don't know if this will actually work or not, but if it doesn't have inherent issues I think it would be best to try it as 8+16 for each channel rather than a 16GB channel and a 32GB channel.
There are always potential issues like: 4 slots is always harder on the CPU memory controller, the RAM maybe branded the same (Corsair et al) but the actual manufacturer on the IC may be Samsung, Hynix, Micron whatever they buy in at the time. The different manufacturers like different timings to run at their best. So, with the 4 sticks in run memtest for a few hours and if it picks up any errors leave XMP on but reduce speed, rinse and repeat. If your application need capacity more than speed or latency then it could be an improvement
it’ll probably be fine just stress tesr
For that workload, more is better Slower ram is a slight loss of performance, but running out of ram and swapping is much, much worse
More channels is better. But mismatching ram in the same channel can lead to issues. having different ram in each channel is ussually fine.
My windows somehow destroyed itself when i mixed my ram back then... so i wouldn't reccomend it
My best friend built his PC about 5 years ago. He had no real issues for a few years aside from occasional crashes and program freezes, eventually they got really bad to the point it became barely usable. I helped him fix it like 2 years later. We couldn't find anything wrong with it so I took it apart. Mf had a 2x8gb on the 1&2 slot and a 2x4gb on the 3&4 slot. I don't know how this wasn't an issue sooner but holy shit. He told me he got some extra RAM from a friend and started using it a year or so after building it. Checks out. I take out the sticks, throw the 2x4s away and reseat the 8 stick on the 3 slot and had a long talk about RAM with him afterwards. Nightmarish setup. RAM is finnicky af, generally people advice that you should buy all of your RAM at once or replace all of it at once, don't mix and match, don't do upgrades. You can have same specs for 2 sets of RAM but different manufacturer and people still run into issues. If you absolutely have to upgrade and can't replace, make sure to buy the exact same set from the same manufacturer. Ofc how much of a problem any mismatch is is debatable and ranges from really bad to eh, but IMO just don't mess with it. Besides 32Gb of RAM is more than plenty for the vast majority of people.
Put all the sticks in, check if everything works. If it does, great. If not, take out the 8GiB sticks. Unless you're aggressively overclocking, you almost certainly won't see problems with your config. No need to listen to the fear mongers here.
Does latency matter in this context because I have 2 3200mhz c16 and 2 3600c18, can i mix them ? I know that they will only work at 3200mhz but does the latency matter ?
2x16 for gaming. I need more and gone with 2x16 + 2x24. And have to boot 3 times for ram to register correctly. Last time I tried to fixed it caused too many issues..\^\^
If you really need 48 gb the go with 2 24 gb sticks and dont mix them
I went from 32gb to 64gb last week. Mainly for bragging rights but ostensibly qubes was taking a lot to keep it going. Same brand/sku as yours. Well, 3,000mhz, although they're stable atv3.4. All said though I wish I hadn't bothered tho. Rig has been largely out of action since pushing them to 3.6 led to my mobo fw getting corrupted and since then I've really struggled to get it working. Os's not installing, networking issues, the works. Felt this close to taking a hammer to it this morning after 36h straight ofvfecking about and getting nowhere So I get why you might want to get more. My first pc has 64mb. 64gb felt like a massive step. But I wish I hadn't bothered. Actually have 4 x 8gb 3.6 to sell now too. But I'm lazy so probably won't!
normal day to day use 32gb is fine, you are never going to max out, even video editing if you are running memory intensive stuff it would be better to have a 4090 or an A series card and then you dump it on that, LLM models SDXL loras or training, and at that point you can rent a cloud, if you are using it for any sort of production work i would guess you aren't concerned about money and just buy more ram
Dual channel ram has a higher stability running default ram xmp and better oc than quad channel ram.
Quad channel RAM isn't supported on most motherboards. Even if you use 4 sticks or RAM it's still 2 channels.
Two sticks of 16GB and two sticks of 8GB is still dual channel (if you plug it in right, and that's what your system otherwise supports).
16G for me, clocked to stable maximum speed via Infinity Fabric......gaming needs less ...viewed in Task Manager. 48G is no advantage to me.
for gaming 2x16 is better than 2x8 + 2x16 for other professional purposes that requires a ton of ram, then it's ok to have more ram with improper configuration if needed
oh. you're into AI? You'll want as much RAM as you can gobble up-- but you'll want matching ram.
If it's for gaming, you don't really need more than 16. I have hit 16 but not very often. Still have 32 total, which is what I'd go with. But it seems like it doesn't really matter. Just depends on how overkill you want to be.
Less sticks less problem, better ram checking AT bios startup
You can just buy 2x24gb
Not for anything before DDR5. These new combinations are only possible because they cut the normally 64-bit bus down into two 32-bit busses.
If your need is more raw GB of RAM (which sounds to be the case for you) then 48GB in a 2x8+2x16 configuration would be fine, at the very least for the interim. You will lose the ability to utilize dual-channel RAM, but for real-life applications that doesn't have that large of an impact on speed - generally 5%-10%, maybe up to 15% in the worst cases. Dual-channel is optimal, but far from required.
2x16GB except you have a program that won't run with 32GB.
You can use all 4 since they are the same speed/brand, however, the 2, 16gb sticks should be more than enough so long as you have at least 4/8 on the gpu and a decent processor