[SOLVED] Upgrade to 32gb or just let it at 16? (Mixing brands and speed)

[mohammed.nihal7]

So basically I got crucial ballistix ddr4 2666mhz 2x8 gb ram, however when I play heavy games, the ram usage is always at 11 or 12gb out of 16. I got 2 4gb ram laying around (Samsung DDR4, 2400mhz), can I mix this ram or the first option is better?

Specs
msi z370 gaming pro carbon motherboad
I5 8600k


Thank you for the help.

 

[USAFRet]

1. Mixing RAM is a crapshoot.
2. If you're only getting up to 12GB or so, adding more does not help.

 

[AUnlikelyPotatoe]

1. Mixing RAM is a crapshoot.

agreed, usually too many issues to be worth it, even same speed different brand is debatable

 

[Wu-Zi-Mu]

Mixing can be unstable, at best you'll have to run them all at 2400MHz, at worst there will be no stable configuration.

If your system is digging into the pagefile a lot, which could be possible if the RAM usage is consistently at 12+ out of 16GB, then upgrading to 24GB will make it faster when running RAM-heavy programs. You might get slightly lower and less stable framerate with games that won't dig into the pagefile. When running a RAM heavy program/game, you can ctrl+alt+del into the Task Manager and check the Commit stat on the Performance tab. If it's higher than your RAM size, that means some programs are being forced to use the pagefile (using your HDD/SSD space as extra working memory).