Installed 12gb ram, is it safe?

[piyushmsd]

My Pc: HP Pavillion AB 523tx
i3 5th gen
Original RAM 4gb
Win 10 64 bit

Hey guys i bought a new 8gb Kingston RAM because my original 4gb ram was inadequate for gaming (tbh, GTA 5). So i installed the new ram and took out the original one. i thus got 8 gm ram. but to try my luck, i installed my original ram too with the new one (8gb+4gb). and to my amazement, my pc shows 12gb. i heard that they wont work together, but they did. So my question is, Do i really get 12 gb of ram or is my system just showing up wrong numbers? is there any way that i could cross check my ram? and is it safe to use? will it damage my PC?

 

[Supahos]

If it's stable all is fine mixing kits can cause some instability but if it's going good might as well use it all

 

[joex444]

LOL. Yes, 4+8 = 12. It works about 97% of the time, the other 3% is when the modules are incompatible.

I'd suggest you just use it. But if you want to get messy, download CPU-Z and check out what speed and timing it's using. It's likely that the 4GB is slower than the 8GB so you might get like 1% better performance with the 8GB by itself... until you do something that wants more than 8GB memory then the 12GB would be much much faster. Hence, leave it; 12 > 8.

If you super duper want to check and verify that it's absolutely A-OK, then hit F8 while booting and select the memory test. Windows 10 should have this.

 

[ikaz]

It will not damage your PC, however the Ram will operate at the slowest setting (so probably the speed of your 4GB).

 

[piyushmsd]

My CPU-Z shows
Type- DDR3
Channel#- Dual
Size- 12Gbytes
NB frequency- 2700 MHz (fluctuating)
DRAM Frequency- 797 MHz
Below subjects have same values- 11 clocks
CL
tRCD
tRP
------
Cycle Time- 28 clocks
Row refresh Cycle time- 208 clocks

In SPD section,

The 4 gb RAM's details are-
Module size- 4096 MBytes
Ranks- SINGLE

while the 8gb RAM's details are-
Module Size- 8192 MBytes
Ranks- Dual
In the timings section, the values of 4 gb ram and 8gb ram are exactly the same
So what does this mean?

 

[010010]

My CPU-Z shows
Type- DDR3
Channel#- Dual
Size- 12Gbytes
NB frequency- 2700 MHz (fluctuating)
DRAM Frequency- 797 MHz
Below subjects have same values- 11 clocks
CL
tRCD
tRP
------
Cycle Time- 28 clocks
Row refresh Cycle time- 208 clocks

In SPD section,

The 4 gb RAM's details are-
Module size- 4096 MBytes
Ranks- SINGLE

while the 8gb RAM's details are-
Module Size- 8192 MBytes
Ranks- Dual
In the timings section, the values of 4 gb ram and 8gb ram are exactly the same
So what does this mean?

You will probably better off just using the 8GB (Which is enough) as the 4GB may limit the 8GB timings and make it slower than it would if it was just the 8GB on its own.