Question RAM upgrade - what to look for

[ashala2202]

Hello, everyone!

I have an Asrock x58 Extreme MoBo with 6 RAM slots. Currently, three are taken with triple channel working. Now, after a very long time, I'm looking to upgrade it and fill up all the other free slots. I know that RAM can be very sensitive when it comes to working together, so I'm looking for help as to what to look at when trying to upgrade here. Here's the picture of one of my RAM sticks. I have three of those working at the moment:

https://ibb.co/CPtPzXn

 

[Lutfij]

There are a couple of things you can do;
1| Look at the motherboard's memory QVL;
https://www.asrock.com/mb/memory/X58 Extreme.pdf
2| Look at DDR3-1600Mhz triple channel ram kits, that you can source off of Ebay. You can try and source individual sticks of ram but they need to be identical in every manner, shape and form.
3| You should make sure you're on the latest BIOS version before performing a ram upgrade.

I found a kit listed on Ebay;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/355806370732
go for it!

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

Fisrt I'd ask is, what do you hope to achieve by maxing out the ram capabilities? Used ram might be a solution, but introduces too many variable for me. If one stick is bad, you could end up going down a rabbit's hole.

Ideally you would want a 6 x kit, but I doubt those are sold new anymore. If the upgrade is for soemthing specific then maybe it's worth the cost to you. Howevere, if you believe you will have a big performance leap, then you will be dissappointed. Even with the extra bandwidth that you would get from upgrading the ram alone.

 

[iampowerslave]

Hard to tell... some mobos and cpus support mixing, others don't. I've just wrote a post about an issue I'm having. Bought six sticks... all identical, at the same time. Used two in a computer and four in another for years. If I now mix them, Memtest fails. If I keep the four and the two separatedly they work. So how can you be sure that you buy three more and ensure they will be compatible with your existing system? You should purchase a new kit with 6 or 8... that's the only sure bet

 

[ashala2202]

Hey there,

Fisrt I'd ask is, what do you hope to achieve by maxing out the ram capabilities? Used ram might be a solution, but introduces too many variable for me. If one stick is bad, you could end up going down a rabbit's hole.

Ideally you would want a 6 x kit, but I doubt those are sold new anymore. If the upgrade is for soemthing specific then maybe it's worth the cost to you. Howevere, if you believe you will have a big performance leap, then you will be dissappointed. Even with the extra bandwidth that you would get from upgrading the ram alone.

Well, recently I upgraded my old GPU 'cause the old one was faulty, so that's one reason and the other is that I've experienced lagging in multitasking and, especially, with multiple tabs open in a web browser. These apps are becoming too cumbersome and require more and more RAM space. For example, with my regular desktop apps open and a few Firefox tabs, I get at least 80% of my RAM capacity taken. So, since I know upgrading RAM is one of the cheapest upgrades you can get, I was hoping to upgrade it a bit.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Well, recently I upgraded my old GPU 'cause the old one was faulty, so that's one reason and the other is that I've experienced lagging in multitasking and, especially, with multiple tabs open in a web browser. These apps are becoming too cumbersome and require more and more RAM space. For example, with my regular desktop apps open and a few Firefox tabs, I get at least 80% of my RAM capacity taken. So, since I know upgrading RAM is one of the cheapest upgrades you can get, I was hoping to upgrade it a bit.

Hmmm, it really depends on the cost. I guess with 18gb it's possible to get high mem usage pretty quickly. Yes, more ram could help here., but I'd still say it's not worth it. But, it may be worth it to you , so that's all that really matters.