Adding Ram of different speeds and overclocking

[awesometastic1]

In my computer I currently have a quad channel GSkill Ripjaws DDR4 (2400 Mhz, 4x4GB) kit. My motherboard (MSI X99S Gaming 7) has another 4 ram slots and I was thinking of adding another quad channel kit. So my first question is, is it particularly important to get the same speed/brand/memory size in the second quad channel, or will it have no bearring on the existing Ram setup?

Second, if I'm looking to overclock the RAM, should that have any bearing on whether I get the same RAM to fill the other slots, and have people found these particular Ripjaws can be overclocked much, or are the gains here not really worth the effort? I'm a complete newb at overclocking, having primarily gone with laptops before this computer, so sorry if those are moronic questions. 🙂

And if it has any bearing on overclocking, I have the Intel i7-5960X (currently overclocked to 3.6Ghz), with several 120MM case fans (in an Obsidian 750D case), and for the processor a 360mm watercooler push/pull.

 

[DarkSable]

What are you doing with your rig that you think you need 32GB for? If you're just gaming, 16GB is already overkill. On the other hand, you already have a $500, x99 socket motherboard, so overkill might not be in your vocabulary.

Yes, if you put more ram in, it's very much beneficial to have the same stuff, especially if you're overclocking. How in the world do you think you're going to be able to tell the tolerances of 8 sticks of ram, much less 8 different sticks of ram?

 

[awesometastic1]

This box is built for a lot of video work and rendering actually. I don't do any gaming. 🙂

 

[DarkSable]

Well there you go! Sorry, we oftentimes get far too many kids with more money than brains.

In your case, however, the extra RAM will definitely help, but the rest of my statement still stands - You'll have less to worry about and will tax your CPU less with the same kits of RAM, and overclocking will be less of a nightmare.

 

[Tradesman1]

If whatever you get will work with what you have is the big thing, if they will play together then yes, you can possibly OC them - for that will want strong sets of DRAM

 

[awesometastic1]

Thanks, and ya. This box was purchased out of continued frustration with the limitations of my old laptop, which for a laptop is quite a machine and for most stuff is mostly indistinguishable from the new box, but can't hold a candle to the new one for video work, which is what I do all day. Every bit of time saved, means that much more work gets done, meaning I make that much more in income. So long term the price wasn't (much) of a consideration and I certainly probably went a bit overboard in a few areas because of it. 🙂

So just to clarify, with overclocking, I definitely should just go with another kit exactly like I currently have in it, but say I didn't overclock the RAM, would adding another Gskills quad channel DDR4 kit at a different clock rate do anything, or would it just all end up running at whatever the slowest RAM kit is?

I guess I'm not clear how the channels work. Is the separate quad channel kit running more or less independently as far as the motherboard's concerned, assuming everything's put in the correct slots it specifies in the manual? So it would run the one kit at whatever speed, and the other at whatever that kit is. Or will it run them both at the same speed, regardless, picking the slower of the kits for the clock speed? Thanks!

 

[joe_be]

I'm not sure about this particular motherboard, but generally you're stuck with whatever the slowest clock speed is out of all of your RAM.

Buy another set of GSkill Ripjaws DDR4.

 

[Tradesman1]

Just for the record, if you mix DRAM of diffferent data rates - you aren't 'stuck' at the slowest speed of the different sticks, you can always change them manually and if they play together can even OC them above the spec data rates. It all depends on if they will even play and on your patience and expertise w/ DRAM