Question dual channel on a asus b85m-e/csm with 3 rams

[Chriss Angeh]

hello everyone, i have 3 rams on my current system 2 that i bought from the same brand and one that i acquired from a generic brand, the 3 rams are 1600 ddr3, the ones i bought from the begining are gskill which have xmp in them , the generic hynix does not of course, so im questions is: does this give any kind of instability on my system? i activated xmp on bios.

ram pictures on system cpuz

from the looks of it dual channels seems to be functioning, or is not?

 

[PC Tailor]

Mixed modules generally are a possible cause of instability (the fact that you bought 2 RAM from completely seperate packs, even if they are the same model).
Dual channel will still operate, however you will have 2 RAM modules running in one channel. Which in some cases can degrade performance.

Normally dual channel means you have 1 RAM stick accessing the CPU in one channel (in one lane of traffic) and the other RAM module with it's own other channel (it's own one lane of traffic). When you run 3 modules in dual channel you have 2 RAM modules sharing one of the lanes of traffic.

But otherwise it will work perfectly fine assuming the mixed modules don't cause instability. Which will usually lead to no boot in most cases.

 

[Chriss Angeh]

Mixed modules generally are a possible cause of instability (the fact that you bought 2 RAM from completely seperate packs, even if they are the same model).
Dual channel will still operate, however you will have 2 RAM modules running in one channel. Which in some cases can degrade performance.

Normally dual channel means you have 1 RAM stick accessing the CPU in one channel (in one lane of traffic) and the other RAM module with it's own other channel (it's own one lane of traffic). When you run 3 modules in dual channel you have 2 RAM modules sharing one of the lanes of traffic.

But otherwise it will work perfectly fine assuming the mixed modules don't cause instability. Which will usually lead to no boot in most cases.

well i booted clearly since i took this picture, so can we say for certain dual channel is operational and without performance degrade/instability? or is there a way to actually test that out and confirm it?

 

[PC Tailor]

well i booted clearly since i took this picture, so can we say for certain dual channel is operational and without performance degrade/instability?

Is it for certain running dual channel? Yes.

Is it for certain completely perfect? No. But it would be hard to tell anyway unless you had an actual problem. What you can say for certain is that it probably is fine. Just it is certainly possible for mixed RAM modules to cause problems down the line, not always, but sometimes. So you'll never know. But what you can see is it appears to be working perfectly fine, so don't worry.

Just raising awareness that's all
As I said, the dual channel / 3 slots still applies though.

 

[Chriss Angeh]

thank you for clarifying this for me, what kind of problems could i experience if there was any?
im gonna assume performance decrease ?

 

[PC Tailor]

thank you for clarifying this for me, what kind of problems could i experience if there was any?
im gonna assume performance decrease ?

There's a possibility of performance decrease from using 3 modules instead of two.

As for other problems if there were instability, frankly the range of possibilities is pretty large so it can be anything from slowing to restarts. But as I said, if it's working fine now, it's probably fine, just it sometimes can cause issues down the line. I wouldn't worry.