Question Can I Mix These Memory Sticks?

[SteveWonda]

Trying to help a buddy out.

He had a single 8GB DDR4 stick in his PC. It's a T Force Vulcan 3000MHZ CL 16-18-18-38 1.35v.

He just purchased an XPG 32GB kit (2x16GB) 3200MHZ CL 16-20-20 1.35v and installed them in the correct slots after removing the 8GB stick. Everything is working fine.

He's asking me if he gets another 1 of the same exact 8GB sticks can he put those in slots 1 and 3 to gain some more memory.

I know enough to notice that the MHZ and timings are different.

Thanks in advance.

This is the new 32GB kit he just purchased and I'll attach a pic of his single 8GB stick.

https://www.newegg.ca/p/0RN-00KG-000J5

https://imgur.com/y2R5bsh

View: https://i.imgur.com/y2R5bsh.jpg

 

[Eximo]

Probably not worth trying unless he has a use case for more than 32GB of memory. I find that I don't even come close to using all of it during normal use. Even my 16GB machine that I use for general stuff only gets full when I leave a silly amount of browser tabs open.

Might work at 2133 or 2400 easily. Possible you could get it up to 3000 at the older memory timing, but then you are losing out on the 3200 speeds and timings. Not to mention that adding a third memory stick type is going to make it even more complicated.

You would have to do all the memory timings by hand, test, and validate for stability.

 

[geofelt]

Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
The internal workings are designed for the capacity of the kit.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards, can be very sensitive to this.
This is more difficult when more sticks are involved.

If you do buy more disparate sticks, they should be the same speed, voltage and cas numbers.
Even then your chances of working are less than 100%
I might guess 90% success for intel and less for amd.

What is your plan "B" if the new stick/s do not work?

 

[SteveWonda]

Thanks guys. That's pretty much what I expected to hear. He asked me and I did about 5 minutes of Googling. Then I told myself "Just ask at Tom's and get this over with" lol.

@geofelt No "B" plan. The 32GB kit is working properly and now a lonely 8GB stick will probably sit in a drawer until who know when. Thanks again.