Question 1600 OR 1866

[Earthling6]

I have an old Dell 3020 SFF which has 8gb ram and I want to upgrade to 16gb here are the actual specs https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-...3-3-ghz-4-gb-500-gb-us-english-qwerty-0kkymn/

My question is should I get DDR3 1600 or DDR3 1866?
According to Crucial I can have either but at different latency's 11 and 13.
As I have no clue about these matters what would be best for a stable medium gaming PC that i am putting a 1050gtx TI into?

 

[Darkbreeze]

For gaming systems, there are plenty of legitimate reviews from the DDR3 era showing very little difference in performance between 1600mhz and 1866mhz memory usage. In fact, it's doubtful you'd notice the difference in any meaningful way. Adding MORE memory though, that MIGHT bring some improvements depending on the game, your settings, and the resolution you are gaming at. It's likely that many games may begin recommending 16GB as a minimum, and in fact some already have.

Also, it looks to me, despite what the Crucial website might say, that the motherboard used in those systems only supports memory speeds up to 1600mhz, although there can be discrepancies in some of the specifications since often they are not updated yet newer BIOS revisions often bring support for hardware and upgrades that weren't specifically supported at release.

Likely, you can use either and I'd go with whichever speed was available at the lower price, all other things being equal. If it's not supported it will simply default to the lower speed.