mixing ram sticks.

[Sly]

Guys do u think its fine to mix single channel and dual channel ram sticks?Right now i have dual channel 8 gb ram(4+4) and im planning to upgrade my ram to 16.so is it ok if i add one more stick of 8 gb ram which will be running in single channel?will i get any problems for mixing dual channel and single channel ram?

[tacoshy]

=AEST=Viking님이 먼저 게시:

Not quite the simple answer that you want, but Yes you can mix RAM.

Though mixing ram can have problems, BSOD's to random app crashes, or causing strange things in some apps.

I have a i7 920 with 2x Mushkin 8GB sticks paired with 2x Samsung 2GB sticks and that system has been running great.

Though I have had a system with 2x PNY sticks and tried pairing them with 2x Corsair sticks and that system refused to boot no matter what I did, both sets worked on their own flawlessly.

That are problems that are fixed since ages. Pre-builders mix ram all the time since years. Last problem with exception of Ryzen which has its own problem I encountered last 10 years ago...

There is no reason why corsair and PNY should not work together. Both don't build RAM and just rebrand them.

There only 3 manufacturer:
Samsung
Micron (Blasstix and Crucial as own brand)
Hynix

Especially with DDR4 the standardization has been on spot and great ensuring compabilities between each other.

[SeriousCCIE]

Yes so the summary I'd take away is:

You can do it. If you are cheap, do it: chances are good that more ram will work better than less ram.

If you can afford to make it all matched, then great. That is the preferred option.

If you blow out some heinously expensive kit and have to buy a replacement for some of it only to discover you can't get more of the same, like me, then you'll be much richer in forced experience and can later come back and answer similar questions other people have about the validity of mixing and matching. But don't do that.

[tacoshy]

SeriousCCIE님이 먼저 게시:

Yes so the summary I'd take away is:

You can do it. If you are cheap, do it: chances are good that more ram will work better than less ram.

If you can afford to make it all matched, then great. That is the preferred option.

If you blow out some heinously expensive kit and have to buy a replacement for some of it only to discover you can't get more of the same, like me, then you'll be much richer in forced experience and can later come back and answer similar questions other people have about the validity of mixing and matching. But don't do that.

If you got an expensive high end kit any fault isn't a problem. All major brands as G.Skill, Corsair, Kingston and Micron offer life time warranty. Yes a warranty that is valid endless and as such will make you egliable for a free replacement for a damaged module at any time ďas long as you didn't caused the defect)

[SeriousCCIE]

Yeah I tore an IC right off of it while getting impatient with the heat gun. I removed the sheathing and added water cooling blocks to them.

At least. That was the plan. After 6 sticks and it taking ages to soften the adhesive and wiggle everything free, I applied just a bit too much force and it was like ripping off a band-aid off of some hairy arm; I am sure my neighbors heard the screams, too.

But to that end, yes--I had a 4 stick kit of DDR2 from Gksill where one of the sticks would fail tests and cause BSODs at any speed. Despite it being years later, they honored the warranty.

I've had good luck with corsair as well.

[Viking2121]

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

=AEST=Viking님이 먼저 게시:

Not quite the simple answer that you want, but Yes you can mix RAM.

Though mixing ram can have problems, BSOD's to random app crashes, or causing strange things in some apps.

I have a i7 920 with 2x Mushkin 8GB sticks paired with 2x Samsung 2GB sticks and that system has been running great.

Though I have had a system with 2x PNY sticks and tried pairing them with 2x Corsair sticks and that system refused to boot no matter what I did, both sets worked on their own flawlessly.

That are problems that are fixed since ages. Pre-builders mix ram all the time since years. Last problem with exception of Ryzen which has its own problem I encountered last 10 years ago...

There is no reason why corsair and PNY should not work together. Both don't build RAM and just rebrand them.

There only 3 manufacturer:
Samsung
Micron (Blasstix and Crucial as own brand)
Hynix

Especially with DDR4 the standardization has been on spot and great ensuring compabilities between each other.

How can you say that? People still run into issues on newer systems, its just less documented since people building new systems people typiclly by kits.

It still can be a problem, I'd say 50% chance it will work, 50% chance it won't.

[x_wing]

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

Not true. You can run full dual channel with 3 sticks. You simply have to put 2x4 GB in channel A and the 8GB in channel B. Dual channel requires both channels to have the same RAM capacity.
Also if you run with uneven channel capacity you not run in single channel, you run in flex mode.

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Master_Race_Geeks/discussions/0/2747650363459040918/

Dual channel means that your system uses a 128 bit bus in order to connect to your ram modules and as each module has a 64 bit bus, having one stick alone won't allow you to have a dual channel setup (at least in that channel...).

As far I can remember, dual channel requires the same amount of ram for each module at the same channel.

[tacoshy]

x_wing님이 먼저 게시:

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

Not true. You can run full dual channel with 3 sticks. You simply have to put 2x4 GB in channel A and the 8GB in channel B. Dual channel requires both channels to have the same RAM capacity.
Also if you run with uneven channel capacity you not run in single channel, you run in flex mode.

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Master_Race_Geeks/discussions/0/2747650363459040918/

Dual channel means that your system uses a 128 bit bus in order to connect to your ram modules and as each module has a 64 bit bus, having one stick alone won't allow you to have a dual channel setup (at least in that channel...).

As far I can remember, dual channel requires the same amount of ram for each module at the same channel.

Then re-read into it. You haven't understood basics. Just parroting wrong information that has been around since ages by ppl parroting the same stuff without knowing how stuff actually work. The same ppl that also never heard about flex mode. Even Intel has it own guide I posted in my guide.

You not having a single channel. 2 RAM slots are connected to the same channel / Bus. It doesn't matter if the channel is occupied by 1 or 2 RAM sticks. Just both channels have to been occupied even stated as such by Intel.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005657/boards-and-kits.html

PS: your theory can't make sense if you think about it logically. Otherwise you can't use dual channel unless you populate all RAM slots. And some motherboards didn't have 4 RAM slots to populate all channels with more then 1 module.

=AEST=Viking님이 먼저 게시:

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

That are problems that are fixed since ages. Pre-builders mix ram all the time since years. Last problem with exception of Ryzen which has its own problem I encountered last 10 years ago...

There is no reason why corsair and PNY should not work together. Both don't build RAM and just rebrand them.

There only 3 manufacturer:
Samsung
Micron (Blasstix and Crucial as own brand)
Hynix

Especially with DDR4 the standardization has been on spot and great ensuring compabilities between each other.

How can you say that? People still run into issues on newer systems, its just less documented since people building new systems people typiclly by kits.

It still can be a problem, I'd say 50% chance it will work, 50% chance it won't.

Where is your evidence on your claim. There various tests on YouTube and as said, pre-builders like me do that all the time for a living. Mixing RAM hasn't been an issues for the past 10 years. And I literally build hundreds of system each year.

[THartmann9374]

I recently added 2 sticks of 16 GB (Patriot Viper Elite) and used 2 sticks of 4 GB (Corsair Vengenace) to make the system total of 40 GB. It's working fine. The memory tests from Windows Memory Diagnosis and MemTest passed. I was able to play games without any RAM issues. For your reference, my mobo is MSI Z170A M7.

The best result is to have identical RAM kit in either A1 & B1 or A2 & B2.

[x_wing]

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

Then re-read into it. You haven't understood basics. Just parroting wrong information that has been around since ages by ppl parroting the same stuff without knowing how stuff actually work. The same ppl that also never heard about flex mode. Even Intel has it own guide I posted in my guide.

What I said regarding the 128 bits bus it's correct. I just didn't know that had this setup flexibility (I wonder if this also applies for AMD)

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

You not having a single channel. 2 RAM slots are connected to the same channel / Bus. It doesn't matter if the channel is occupied by 1 or 2 RAM sticks. Just both channels have to been occupied even stated as such by Intel.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005657/boards-and-kits.html

You're right, seems that intel use the bigger module to map upper a lower addresses.

=AEST=Viking님이 먼저 게시:

PS: your theory can't make sense if you think about it logically. Otherwise you can't use dual channel unless you populate all RAM slots. And some motherboards didn't have 4 RAM slots to populate all channels with more then 1 module.

It's completely logical. As I said, you need a 128 bit bus and each DIMM module has 64 bit bus, so dual channel requires of two memory modules in parallel. Regarding the Intel solution, they are probably multiplexing the bus of one of the channels in order to get the 128 bits I mention.

By the way, seems that they are flexible enough to make work a dual channel even if you don't have modules of the same size (of course, part of the memory will have less bandwidth).

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Some people have zero logic or common sense I guess. Oh and they never read, yup...

[tacoshy]

x_wing님이 먼저 게시:

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

Then re-read into it. You haven't understood basics. Just parroting wrong information that has been around since ages by ppl parroting the same stuff without knowing how stuff actually work. The same ppl that also never heard about flex mode. Even Intel has it own guide I posted in my guide.

What I said regarding the 128 bits bus it's correct. I just didn't know that had this setup flexibility (I wonder if this also applies for AMD)

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

You not having a single channel. 2 RAM slots are connected to the same channel / Bus. It doesn't matter if the channel is occupied by 1 or 2 RAM sticks. Just both channels have to been occupied even stated as such by Intel.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005657/boards-and-kits.html

You're right, seems that intel use the bigger module to map upper a lower addresses.

=AEST=Viking님이 먼저 게시:

PS: your theory can't make sense if you think about it logically. Otherwise you can't use dual channel unless you populate all RAM slots. And some motherboards didn't have 4 RAM slots to populate all channels with more then 1 module.

It's completely logical. As I said, you need a 128 bit bus and each DIMM module has 64 bit bus, so dual channel requires of two memory modules in parallel. Regarding the Intel solution, they are probably multiplexing the bus of one of the channels in order to get the 128 bits I mention.

By the way, seems that they are flexible enough to make work a dual channel even if you don't have modules of the same size (of course, part of the memory will have less bandwidth).

BS - you still haven't gotten it. You said 2 modules in the same channel. There 2 channels on consumer motherboards where a channel uses 2 slots. Each channel is used with a 64 bit bus not the RAM module. The size doesn't matter for it. The bus is with the IMC and the slots not with the modules.

Same for AMD since pretty much always.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Single channel is 64bit
Dual is 128bit

But that has nothing to do with the ram itself. And it's not 64bit per dimm slot. It's a chipset based switching mode, simple as that. You could technically install 2x ram and still run single channel mode. And running more than 2x in dual channel is not going to raise it above 128bit

[x_wing]

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

BS - you still haven't gotten it. You said 2 modules in the same channel. There 2 channels on consumer motherboards where a channel uses 2 slots. Each channel is used with a 64 bit bus not the RAM module. The size doesn't matter for it. The bus is with the IMC and the slots not with the modules.

Same for AMD since pretty much always.

First off, calm down. This forum is to help and learn, refering to others the way you do is far from nice.

Second, yeah I should have said "on each channel".

Third, when I refered to modules bus I was refering to the data path in the module.

[tacoshy]

I'm perfectly calm as always.
However I already told you the exact way stuff is working and even posted you guides for it.
Still you try to discuss about technical facts that are wrong.

Like right now saying you talk about the module bus or a datapass in the module which has nothing to do with it. It is the same for everything.

It's okay to learn something, but then you should actually do and read the stuff that has been said correctly instead of trying to correct it with BS info

[x_wing]

tacoshy님이 먼저 게시:

I'm perfectly calm as always.
However I already told you the exact way stuff is working and even posted you guides for it.
Still you try to discuss about technical facts that are wrong.

Like right now saying you talk about the module bus or a datapass in the module which has nothing to do with it. It is the same for everything.

It's okay to learn something, but then you should actually do and read the stuff that has been said correctly instead of trying to correct it with BS info

It's ok to want to share knowledge, it's not ok when you start your answers like this: "Just parroting wrong information that has been around since ages by ppl parroting the same stuff without knowing how stuff actually work." Notice that you started with this types of answers on your very first answer to me. If you're calm, then your problem is with manners.

And by the way, data path has a lot to do with my answer as that was the reasoning I used in order to think that you cannot have a 128 bit bus to the CPU with ony one DIMM module on a channel (of course, I didn't know about flex mode, but whatever...)