Question Mixing ram?

Rhaemond

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So I already have a Ballistix sport 8gb 2666mhz installed,
I wanna add another 2666mhz ram like HyperX or Team Force Delta RGB
Would it be okay? My motherboard is a b450m bazooka plus...
 

iMatty

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It is not 100% guaranteed that it will work.
They sell kits for a purpose, they test these kits together and see if they will work or not.
You might be lucky enough for those two different rams to be working together but most of the times it wont work.
Sell what you have and buy a kit of 2x8GB and check your motherboard manual for the supporting ram kits.
 

Rhaemond

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It is not 100% guaranteed that it will work.
They sell kits for a purpose, they test these kits together and see if they will work or not.
You might be lucky enough for those two different rams to be working together but most of the times it wont work.
Sell what you have and buy a kit of 2x8GB and check your motherboard manual for the supporting ram kits.
Yea I was afraid of that. I now have two choices: buy another same RAM or sell the one I have and buy a kit. Anyways, thanks!
 

Satan-IR

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Will it work? You won't know unless you try.

Will it have stability problems later on and cause BSODs and other issues? You'll never know unless you try and if it works you keep and use it for a while.

Sell what you have and a get a kit which is guaranteed by the manufacturer that would work in the form it's sold. Heck, sometimes (rarely) even those don't play nicely with the system let alone different RAM.
 

Rhaemond

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Will it work? You won't know unless you try.

Will it have stability problems later on and cause BSODs and other issues? You'll never know unless you try and if it works you keep and use it for a while.

Sell what you have and a get a kit which is guaranteed by the manufacturer that would work in the form it's sold. Heck, sometimes (rarely) even those don't play nicely with the system let alone different RAM.
Hmm aight. Thanks for the input sir!

Honestly, with a Ryzen, I'd go the sell route and get a kit of faster RAM.
Interesting. But I think I'm already contented with 2666mhz for now, since I don't use the iGPU of the Ryzen...
 

fahad9t

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whatever ram you want to get but make sure the ram u buy has same freq as ur ram which is currently installed and try to split ur desired ram size in to numbers of ram slots u got if u got 4 and u want 16 gb ram totale then better take 4gb x4 sticks multi channel is good for profomance
 

ishaankaushik

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It is not 100% guaranteed that it will work.
They sell kits for a purpose, they test these kits together and see if they will work or not.
You might be lucky enough for those two different rams to be working together but most of the times it wont work.
Sell what you have and buy a kit of 2x8GB and check your motherboard manual for the supporting ram kits.
No these kits are just a way to do business. Intel says that you can mix RAM of same speed and capacity and it will work just fine.
 

iMatty

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Excuse me? it is not just me that one who is saying that, a lot of mods and including me say that.
Rams is sold in kits for a purpose, mixing ram is not always going to work.
But whatever you are saying, if the OP waste his money on mixing ram and it doesn't work, but it worked and it had a slower speed that please do not blame anyone but yourself.

No these kits are just a way to do business. Intel says that you can mix RAM of same speed and capacity and it will work just fine.
 
No these kits are just a way to do business. Intel says that you can mix RAM of same speed and capacity and it will work just fine.
Comparing apples to oranges doesn't work. Intel may say a lot of things that have absolutely no bearing on an AMD installation. Please don't encourage others to waste their money on mere opinion.

There are hosts of actual tests that validate the practice of installing memory in test-matched pairs or quads, and the only responsible recommendation is to sell the old and buy a matched pair.
 
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iMatty

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Comparing apples to oranges doesn't work. Intel may say a lot of things that have absolutely no bearing on an AMD installation. Please don't encourage others to waste their money on mere opinion.

There are hosts of actual tests that validate the practice of installing memory in test-matched pairs or quads, and the only responsible recommendation is to sell the old and buy a matched pair.

That is what i hate, when someone comes with no knowledge about a certain thing and start spreading words of his own to let people waste money.
 

ishaankaushik

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That is what i hate, when someone comes with no knowledge about a certain thing and start spreading words of his own to let people waste money.
I never said that the OP should buy the RAM straightforward. Yes that is a safer side to buy kits. And if you know of any such case of not working RAM please tell otherwise you can't say I am wrong. I forgot to mention timings too must be same. I have purchased RAMs this way and they are working fine. Has anyone verified this thing?
 
Has anyone verified this thing?

You mean outside of a huge number of motherboard and memory manufacturer published tests, over more than a decade?

I have read through the boards for some time, now, and have seen the plethora of complaints of erratic operation, BSODs and outright refusals to post. I've also noted the commonplace disregard for purchasing matched pairs of memory for use in systems--including AMD-based constructions--and the outright denial that this can have anything to do with the issue at hand.

When you're clocking below 2GHz, you might get away with it just fine, but you will be operating a system with compromise configuration settings to make that happen. That system will not be operating at maximal efficiency--period.

You will not get away with doing similarly when you are clocking a Ryzen up into the 4GHz range, and OCing at that--not without serious configuration hacking to get things to just work, never mind working reliably.

When it comes to making a recommendation to another person, in regards to how they might spend THEIR MONEY on a system upgrade, the only responsible recommendation is that of buying matched pairs of memory to accomplish such an upgrade.
 
Please note that compatibility not just a matter of PRIMARY settings such as:

Voltage

CAS Latency (tCL)
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD)
Row Precharge Time (tRP)
RAS Active Time (tRAS)
Command Rate (CR)

that people normally think of, and usually only the specs you see listed, but also:

Write Recovery Time (tWR)
Refresh Cycle Time (tRFC)
RAS to RAS Delay Long (tRDD_L)
RAS to RAS Delay Short (tRDD_S)
Write to Read Delay Long (tWTR_L)
Write to Read Delay Short (tWTR_S)
Read to Precharge (tRTP)
Four Active Window (tFAW)
CAS Write Latency (tCWL)

and

tREFI
tCKE
tRDRD (_SG, _DG, _DD, _DR)
tRDWR (_SG, _DG, _DD, _DR)
tWRRD (_SG, _DG, _DD, _DR)
tWRWR (_SG, _DG, _DD, _DR)


Which the system may or not be able to handle differences.

This doesn't even get into XMP stability issues.

It sucks to have to replace a working DIMM. Popping in a similar one MAY work, may give subtle errors or instability issues, or may not work period.

I would recommend getting a MATCHED pair for that reason.
 

iMatty

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Well if i didnt already test 5 or 6 different rams together i wouldn't say that buying a kit matters instead of single mixed rams.
I already tested more than 4 on my own rig and the two that came in the kit worked just fine else it kept giving me boot loop and it didnt work.
 

ishaankaushik

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Well if i didnt already test 5 or 6 different rams together i wouldn't say that buying a kit matters instead of single mixed rams.
I already tested more than 4 on my own rig and the two that came in the kit worked just fine else it kept giving me boot loop and it didnt work.
Is this related to motherboard BIOS? I think it is.
 

ishaankaushik

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Nope it is not, when i used the mismatched ram sticks it started giving me a loop restart until i removed one of the rams and then it worked just fine.
You got it wrong. What I mean to to say is BIOS compatibility matters. In fact it all comes down to what kind of motherboard you have and how its BIOS support mixed memory.
 

iMatty

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Rams are sold in kits for a purpose else than that they wouldn't sell ram in kits and sell them in single kits instead.
Using mixed wont be 100% going to work or give you a post even, you will be lucky if you even get a screen.
The two rams i used that were mixed, were supposed by my motherboard and the latest bios i had on my motherboard, still didnt give me a post and kept giving me a reboot loop.