Current Events > Quick question about RAM. Gonna upgrade today.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know sticks need to be matching sets, but do I need to buy the same speed as what Ive already got? Or can most modern motherboards support whatever speed, so long as its the correct DDR type?

Because if I can, Ill buy the best hardware possible. But I dont wanna get something my PC cant use.

RAM is a good album, but I don't think any of its tracks were featured in a DDR game

I didn't get the impression it was strictly PC or anything btw, but I guess it isnt either? Idk

You should try to buy the exact RAM you have (speed and capacity, not necessarily brand, but that helps too), if you're adding 2 sticks to an already 2 stick setup. Is that what you're doing?

Okay. Here's the lowdown. You can get RAM that have different speeds, and the faster speed will underclock to the slower speed. That's been a thing for years. What has changed is the idea of memory overclocking and tuning. Used to be you had to fiddle with the switches manually in the BIOS, then run Prime95 to test and validate your configuration. Nowadays, most kits will come with a factory dialed in overclock that you activate in a menu in your BIOS. You run the risk of creating system instability if you get a slower kit of RAM, because now your BIOS will read that you have two different kits of RAM with two different memory profiles that can be activated. Your faster kit can probably underclock to the slower memory profile, as it usually has tighter timings (CAS Latency), but you do need to be relatively comfortable with going into your BIOS to adjust these settings.

If you have literally no idea what I'm talking about, then just get a kit of RAM that runs at the same memory speed that you have currently.

bluezero posted...

You should try to buy the exact RAM you have (speed and capacity, not necessarily brand, but that helps too), if you're adding 2 sticks to an already 2 stick setup. Is that what you're doing?

No, Im replacing them. Ive got two 8GB sticks right now. Going to upgrade to 64GB.

So Im either gonna get two 32GB sticks, or one 64.

Alucard188 posted...

Okay. Here's the lowdown. You can get RAM that have different speeds, and the faster speed will underclock to the slower speed. That's been a thing for years. What has changed is the idea of memory overclocking and tuning. Used to be you had to fiddle with the switches manually in the BIOS, then run Prime95 to test and validate your configuration. Nowadays, most kits will come with a factory dialed in overclock that you activate in a menu in your BIOS. You run the risk of creating system instability if you get a slower kit of RAM, because now your BIOS will read that you have two different kits of RAM with two different memory profiles that can be activated. Your faster kit can probably underclock to the slower memory profile, as it usually has tighter timings (CAS Latency), but you do need to be relatively comfortable with going into your BIOS to adjust these settings.

If you have literally no idea what I'm talking about, then just get a kit of RAM that runs at the same memory speed that you have currently.

No I got it, I just couldnt remember if specific types of motherboards only supported specific speeds. Replacing both my sticks, so I wont need to worry about underclocking one.

HaVeNII7 posted...

No, Im replacing them. Ive got two 8GB sticks right now. Going to upgrade to 64GB.

So Im either gonna get two 32GB sticks, or one 64.

Oh, if you're replacing the sticks, then that's even better. You don't have to worry about system instability. You just have to worry about whether your computer can handle the configuration. What motherboard do you have? If you're on Windows 10, your computer should be able to handle up to 128 GB of RAM. It's up to your motherboard at that point to determine whether you can handle the speed that you bought. You really should find out what motherboard you have and whether it can support the memory profile. Otherwise it's just going to run at base clock speeds, and you're leaving a lot of performance on the table unless you specifically tune the kit yourself.

I'd also recommend 2 32GB sticks as opposed to 1 64GB stick, so you can take advantage of dual channel memory configurations.

generally you can mix and match ram so long as they are the same generation (ddr4, ddr5 etc). you can also generally mix and match and run in dual channel. but they will bottleneck to whatever is the slowest. you'll still get the full capacity though (i.e. 4+8 will get you 12, not 8)
thats a very brief overview, it is a little more complex than that but not to a major extent

If you're using XMP then definitely get matching speeds.

Just curious, why 64GB of RAM? I understand if you're video editing, but if you're just gaming, that's a lot of overkill.

bluezero posted...

Just curious, why 64GB of RAM? I understand if you're video editing, but if you're just gaming, that's a lot of overkill.

if you want to run virtual machines in a home lab environment, 16gb is unusable and 32gb is very small

Alucard188 posted...

Oh, if you're replacing the sticks, then that's even better. You don't have to worry about system instability. You just have to worry about whether your computer can handle the configuration. What motherboard do you have? If you're on Windows 10, your computer should be able to handle up to 128 GB of RAM. It's up to your motherboard at that point to determine whether you can handle the speed that you bought. You really should find out what motherboard you have and whether it can support the memory profile. Otherwise it's just going to run at base clock speeds, and you're leaving a lot of performance on the table unless you specifically tune the kit yourself.

I'd also recommend 2 32GB sticks as opposed to 1 64GB stick, so you can take advantage of dual channel memory configurations.

Got it. According to the specifications summary.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/619263.pdf

"4x DIMM Max. 128GB DDR4 4600"

bluezero posted...

Just curious, why 64GB of RAM? I understand if you're video editing, but if you're just gaming, that's a lot of overkill.

@bluezero Probably a dumb reason to a lot of people, but I'm super, super huge into modding Skyrim. And the kind of graphics mods I install will pretty often cause the game to chug. I've heard time and time again, people say that when modding Skyrim, it's more dependent on your RAM than anything else, so long as the rest of your PC is up to par, which mine definitely is. So I wanna make the upgrade. It's one of my main hobbies right now, so it's worth it to me.

Breh just download more ram

Cool beans :)

HaVeNII7 posted...

Got it. According to the specifications summary.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/619263.pdf

"4x DIMM Max. 128GB DDR4 4600"

Oh, so you're on 10th gen Intel on a Z series board. That's good. You don't have to worry about XMP not being supported, and Intel cares less about MT/s than Ryzen does. You may not get the rated speed for the kit, but you should be able to get it running and stable.