A friend of mine has a socket 1150 board with 8GB of RAM currently installed. (9-9-9-24, CL9, 1.5V) She has come into possession of a 4GB kit (2X2GB, same exact timings, voltage etc but different manufacturer) Could she safely add the 4 to the exisiting 8 to make 12GB Or will there be issues, single channel mode instead of dual etc?
i have a mix of Patriot and kingston, i just matched the specs up in BIOS and they all work fine. You can mix brands so long the DIMs are similar, saying that mine where quiet different. Kingston sticks are 6GB (3x2GB) 2400Mhz @ 11-12-11-28 i think, Patriot sticks are 6GB (3x2GB) 1600Mhz @ 8-8-8-8-24 I got the Kingston set to match my Partiot RAM just fine apart from the last timing which had to be at 25, even with T1 settings. Still working in Trippe Channel too
Thanks for the response Otis. I think on your board, 12GB, as a total is fine as I believe they run in triple channel mode. In a socket 1150 board, they normally run in dual channel, hence my query about the amount and the possibility of the whole lot dropping down to run in single channel mode if there differing amount of RAM in slots 2/4 as there is in 1/3.
the size of the memory on each stick should not matter. you just need to keep it to increments of 2 stick to keep dual channel, SO: 1 sticks = single channel 2 sticks = dual channel 3 sticks = single channel 4 sticks = dual channel so it only matters how many sticks you have in, and in the correct order, (normally lightest colored slots first if you are not filling all the RAM slots up)
Just to add to that, generally mismatched memory will be mapped so that identical amounts to dual channel and any remaining to single channel, so you should still get the benefit of dual channel for the most part.
Only each pair of sticks need to match in size for dual channel. Mixing voltages is often not the best idea. If speeds don't match you generally want to set all to whichever has the slowest timings and frequency and it usually works fine. Some motherboards are much fussier about memory than others though. While I have all the same brand and even series with identical everything, I am running a 2x4GB and a 2x2GB kit for 12GB total on one of my machines and it's fine.
