Can I match those 2 types of RAM

[Ragna]

Simple question. I bought my pc-rig with one 8gb DDR3-1866 ram, and wanted to upgrade to 16, but this ram was nowhere to find to buy in my country, so I decided to order a kit of two 8gb Hyper X DDR-3 1866, when this idea came to my mind. I saw that a lot of people dont recommend mixing different 2 rams with different specs, but can I mix 2 or more same specs ram but different brand? I was comparing those two brands, but I dont have enough knowledge to truly know if they are gonna match. Here are the RAMs :

(1) - Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR-3 1866 UDIMM : http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ga-b85-hd3/CT4399965

(kit of 2) - Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 1866 : http://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/HX318C10FBK2_16.pdf

Also if I try to put all 3 rams in, is there a way my rig can be damaged if they are not compatible?

Thanks in advance

Edit : Also my Mother-Board is Gigabyte GA- B85-HD3, if this info somehow helps

 

[bolosfura]

you can add diferent RAMs, just make sure all of them are compatible with your mobo. BUT, it's not recommended because the performance hit.
they all need to work with the same specs, so, in your case, your RAM will increase latency (not a big deal, though)
another problem is dualchannel. with 3 RAMs they wont have the option to work in dual channel, so it will also have a small performance hit.

so, long story short: since you already spent the money you can use the 3 ras without problem, with i'd recommend using just the 2x8 kit, since 16 GB are more than enough and they will work slightly faster.

as for your other question: no, the syste wont be damaged if you use several types of RAM. in strange situations the system may not boot (odd), but wont be damaged.

 

[shloader]

Basically it's always a case of 'it might work'. In this case it might work @ 1866MHZ but you'll have to adjust the timings to whichever is lesser. By lesser I mean lower performing. Lets say you got a 1866MHZ stick and a 2133MHZ stick. Well, simply put you're gonna have to run the ram @ 1866MHZ which the 2133MHZ stick will have no issue doing. Personally, if I had two sticks of not-same 1866MHZ ram, I'm not going to manually fiddle with the individual timings much to make them play nice @ 1866MHZ. I'll just drop down to 1600MHZ and call it good. Single steps in speed for ram do not make much of a difference in overall system performance.

Also, you should only ever run sticks in pairs. A third stick will knock the system back to a single channel mode if I recall correctly. Again, not a huge hit to performance but generally not done unless you are actually doing something that utilizes that much ram. I'm still trying to justify going beyond 8 myself.

 

[Ragna]

thank you guys for the advice. I decided to go for 16gb ram because sometimes I stream and most of the time when I play games, I multitask on my second monitor using chrome, which can lead to bigger RAM usage. The ram I currently have in my pc is probably older and not avaiable in my country anymore, so I bought a pair of ram, but i feel sorry for the old ram, or dont know what to do with it, so i thought, why not go big? But since you guys said that dual-channeling gains speed, i might go for the extra speed