Question Mixing Ram

[YungJellie]

Hey guys,
so I wanted to upgraid the ram in my pc, I had 2x4 gb and wanted to have 16. I read on this forum and everywhere on the internet that mixing different kind of sticks was a bad idea. So i decided to just buy 2 new 8 gb sticks. Now my question is. I saw that sometimes mixing works and sometimes it doesn't. Can it do any harm to check if they work when i use them all four? I'm happy with 16gb at the moment but seeing that i have 24gb laying around I might aswell check it out? And if I do use them all is there anyway I can see if it is giving me worse performance than with 2x8? Thanks in advance!

 

[R4DIO4CT1VE]

you shouldn't be able to do any damage by trying out working ram.

You should check the speeds of your ram, if your new ram is faster than your old ram, it will run at the speed of the older ram (chain is only as strong as the weakest link).

If your new ram is faster than your old ram, I would just use the new ram unless you are actually hitting 16gb of ram usage.

Make sure your ram is in the right slots in accordance to your motherboard.

 

[USAFRet]

It won't break anything if you try.

It might not work, though.

 

[JQB45]

I can tell you from my recent experience that in order to get my (2x4GB) + (2x8GB) kit running well and stable has been a challenge and involves me setting the memory speed's and timings by hand. My Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 kits are rated at CAS 15 (2x4GB) and CAS 16 (2x8GB). The fastest speed I have been able to get this set of mismatched memory close to stable so far is DDR4-2666 CAS 16-18-18-18-28-62-1t. I am having to set the primary timings by hand.

If you are not comfortable doing that then I wouldn't run a mismatched set of memory. In that case remove your 2x4GB kit and save it for a future build or sell it.