[SOLVED] RAM purchasing help?

[Lil’bertz]

I have 2 questions regarding to RAM purchasing.

Is it ok to buy individual same brand, model, frequency, and latency sticks of RAM for dual channel instead of buying a proper RAM kit?
like for example: buying two individual trident z sticks or mixing ram from another trident z ram kit vs the actual trident z ram kit.
Additional to the previous question: will it enable dual channel and memory overclocking or XMP?

It is ok to buy and add another stick of RAM to your current system for dual channel?
example: I currently have 8GB RAM and im going to add another 8GB RAM(either same brand and model but different manufactured date or different brand but same capacity and speed).
Will this still enable dual channel?

Im currently using a i5 6400, an Asus h110m motherboard and single 2133 MHz RAM. I currently dont have a graphics card.

 

[Karadjgne]

Ram is a bunch of chiplets made from sheets of silicon soldered to a pcb. There's only a handful of ram OEMs and they make the ram for everyone. You'll find the same Samsung chiplets in gskill Trident-Z, or Patriot elite, gskill RipJaws, Adata and a few others.

So under the fancy and basically useless heatsink, behind the fancy rgb lights and funky paint job you'll find many sticks are identical.

Except for the chiplets themselves. Being made from impure silicon, every sheet is different or has different levels or kinds of impurities. They are unique.

So it really doesn't matter if you bought 2 seperately packaged sticks, of the exact same size, speed, vendor, voltage, model, color, type, from the same store, on the same isle, on the same peg, on the same day at the same time, one stick right after the other, they are different.

Consequently, it's pot luck. They'll either play nice, need adjustments or hate each other. No idea which will happen until you try. Which is why it's always a better idea to just purchase what total you want in One package, it's factory guaranteed to play nice as they've done all the testing for you.