Question Unsuccessful RAM upgrade

[phoenyx]

Hi Guys, I just had a quick question regarding an unsuccessful RAM upgrade.

I have Dell XPS 8930 i7 9700 with an Geforce RTX and 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2666MHz UDIMM.

I'm thinking of just doubling the memory to 32GB as I do a lot of Photoshop and Premiere work. Though I've never upgraded memory before I've heard it's fairly easy!

I popped a post on here last year but only just got round to finally doing it. I went to Crucial to find out the correct memory and then bought them on offer from Amazon.

Unfortunately upon nervously following memory installation videos and installing them i ended up with a black screen after boot-up and never got to windows. I googled it and found this is because the memory is not compatible, so i pulled it back out.

The memory I got is here: 8GB x2 Crucial Ram According to Crucial's website after I told it my PC spec it should have been compatible.

Any ideas why this didn't work or what I should be getting instead that will work!?

Thanks very much

P.S
I have seen online that some people have said you cannot mix and match between memory brands, could this be it!?

 

[phoenyx]

That's because you're on the Memory tab. I said check the SPD tab.

-Wolf sends

Oh yes, stupid of me!

Here's the SPD data: SPD

Thanks

 

[Wolfshadw]

So yes, if you're trying to match RAM, be sure to get modules rated for 1.20 volts.

-Wolf sends

 

[phoenyx]

So yes, if you're trying to match RAM, be sure to get modules rated for 1.20 volts.

-Wolf sends

Yes thanks. I looked at the original ones i purchased that didnt work and they are the correct volts it seems which is odd. Perhaps as another user suggested it was because they were not sold as a 'kit'.

These other two 2x16GB RAM 2x8GB RAMsuggested by Crucial also seem to fit the correct spec and volts, so i could try one more time as at least they are sold as kits.

 

[Wolfshadw]

When speaking of RAM "kits", we're talking about every RAM module in your system were sold as a single kit. Both links you have there are for kits. The two modules in each kit are guaranteed to work together. Purchasing two separate kits, even of the same manufacturer, same speed, same size, same voltage, same everything are NOT guaranteed to work together.

-Wolf sends

 

[Karadjgne]

Ram is made up of several silicon chiplets stuck to a pcb. All ram is like that, regardless of make or model. Being made of silicon, it's guaranteed there are impurities in it, no silicon is 100% pure. You'll get bits of carbon or iron or gold or tin or lead impurities.

The Primary timings are the 19-19-19- etc that cpu-z shows. What it doesn't show is the 40+ Secondary and Tertiary timings. It's those timings that are affected the most by the impurities.

A Kit is a sealed package that contains 1, 2, 4 or 8 sticks of ram. That ram has been tested, mixed, retested, certified as compatible with all the sticks in that particular kit. Because of the impurities in the silicon, there's absolutely no guarantee that 2 kits will be compatible. They are not tested by the factory. You can buy 2 kits from the same shelf, same store, same day, 1 right after the other, same brand, make, model and speed, everything an exact match and they don't work together. Conflicting impurities. You can have Intel ram with different sizes and makes and models and add amd ram that's totally different in every way, and they work great. There's simply no way to tell until You take on the role of tester. The factory has thousands of sticks to play with, you have the 2 you bought.

You have existing ram. That came from a single kit. You bought new ram, a new kit and are trying to get 2 kits to work together. It'll either work as is, work with adjustments or not work at all.

Best bet if you want 32Gb is buy a 2x16Gb kit (2 sticks in 1 package) and sell your existing ram.

 

[Dean0919]

I have seen online that some people have said you cannot mix and match between memory brands, could this be it!?

You can, just sometimes it doesn't work, it's risky, it's like either it will work, either not. Personally I mixed different RAM sticks several times in my builds and did not have problems, but only once & it was similar problem as yours:

My wife had Asus P7H55-M LX motherboard with 2GB+2GB Kingston memory sticks. I decided to upgrade them with 4GB+4GB sticks. Went to store and we tried different memory sticks with different brands. We tried at least ten different sticks and non of them worked! It was same problem that you have - no display signal on monitor. After so many attempts in different stores, I gave up and went home, but out of curiosity I tried my own memory sticks in her computer. I had 4GB sticks of G.Skill brand and I had four of such sticks (16GB in total). They were 2 kits bought together and they were working absolutely fine in my computer with Z77 motherboard. I thought it would be same and they wouldn't work just like all the memory sticks we tried in stores, but by my surprise we got display signal on monitor. It started working and I decided to give her my sticks, but then appeared another problem. My wife told me that her computer was bluescreening and restarting sometimes, not too often though. Maybe once in a 3 days or so... Seems like these sticks weren't working perfectly in her board, so I decided to remove them and put her old 2GB Kingston sticks. Once I removed them and put her old memory sticks, there was no display signal. I removed them, tried G.Skill memory sticks again and still no signal. Then I tried only one stick and to not make my post long, somehow I made it work after several attempts of switching and trying of all these sticks. Once we got signal on her old memory sticks, computer started working stable without bluescreens. However, later, if I would try again to put G.Skill memory stick(s) sometimes they would give no signal on display, sometimes not. It was like, either it would work, either not and even putting old Kingston memory sticks would give no display signal and magically finally it would work finally.

Later we sold that computer with it's initial kingston memory sticks and bought new computer for her. Actually I upgraded my main computer and I gave my 3770k i7 and all my four 4GB G.Skill memory sticks to her. All I had to do was to buy new motherboard for her, which I bought Z77 and those sticks are still working fine for that board.

But yeah, as you see from my story, memory sticks can be very sensitive.

 

[phoenyx]

Thanks for the advice guys
It looks like starting fresh with 2x16GB is the best option.