Should I add in extra ram thats a little slower?

[tsrnc2]

I have a xeon e3-1286 v3 on a C7Z87-OCE motherboard with two radeon 580.
I plan on gaming and mining when not gaming.

I have two ddr3 8G cards I got for free. These ones https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231558
I bought two more ddr3 8G 2Rx4 PC3-10600R. Should I add the slower cards in or keep them out?

 

[volkgren]

It would help if you told us the rest of your stems specs and what you will be using the system for.

 

[Solandri]

RAM speed generally only makes about a 2%-5% difference in real-world tasks. Whereas if your system is running out of RAM and begins swapping to the pagefile, it can perform thousands of times slower. So if you're frequently using all your free RAM, then by all means you should add the slower memory modules.

That said, mining crytocurrency with the CPU is a losing proposition. The cost of the electricity you burn will far exceed the value of any coins you mine. Even mining with a GPU has become uneconomical. The "professional" miners are using custom processors specifically designed for (and only for) mining cryptocurrency at the lowest possible power consumption. There's no way you can compete with that with a home system.

 

[tsrnc2]

Unless you get free power and you already bought the hardware for gaming. Then it would be silly to not mine.

 

[Solandri]

Unless you get free power and you already bought the hardware for gaming. Then it would be silly to not mine.

Well, if you get free power, it's still silly to mine because it's economically destructive, rather than constructive. It's just that your rental agreement has a loophole in it. And you'd be abusing that loophole for your personal financial gain. (By economically destructive, I mean it costs the person paying for the power than you gain from using the power, making it a net drain on the economy. Economically constructive transactions benefit all parties involved.)

But I'm not gonna tell you to stop because that's really an issue between you and your landlord. I personally wouldn't do it because it's bad for the economy and the environment. But it's not my place to tell you what you should do in this situation. I will only tell you the consequences. Your landlord will eventually catch on and either start making you pay the power bill, making your monthly expenses less predictable. Or he'll increase your rent to cover the higher bill. And if he doesn't decrease it when your power bill returns to normal, then you will still end up losing money in the long-term. TANSTAAFL

 

[volkgren]

More than 16GB will not help you with gaming or mining.

 

[tsrnc2]

You assume wrong. At my house which I own, I am powered by solar. I always have extra power during the day because im not there. I rent warehouse space and do plan on using asic miners but in lieu of electric heaters ( I do pay for that electricity ). They were cheeper then the heaters on ebay anyway. Anywhere you use electric heat you could be mining. It seems you have a very negative view of mining. Either way it's more of an afterthought for me the machine is for gaming and the asics are for heating my warehouse space. And my post is about ram speed in real world game useage witch has been answered.

 

[Solandri]

Yeah, if you use it in lieu of heating, then it's essentially free. Doesn't matter if you heat your home with a ceramic heating element or a CPU - 100% of the electricity is becoming heat either way. As for extra power during the day (presumably not the night), it may be more cost-effective to resell the power or store it. But again that's an extremely convoluted comparison, and it sounds like you know what you are doing.

My intent wasn't to assume. It was to provide advice that would be applicable to most people in typical use cases, steering them away from mistakes based on common wrong assumptions. You sound like an unusual person in an atypical use case and have thought this all through. Do as you will.