Greetings Cred Forumsmen. So, long story short, I'm a huge fag who bought a prebuilt gaymen desktop about 4 or 5 years ago. I got a high mid-range (at the time) video card, I can still run most new console ports and shit at high settings with no trouble and I'm not a whiny graphics-fag anyway. My current problem is my RAM bottleneck. I only got it initially with 4 gigs of RAM installed because I knew RAM would be the cheapest thing to upgrade later on down the line, so here we are. I've got 4 DDR3 slots on my mobo, and from everything I've managed to google it seems like RAM is pretty much plug and play, but if there's anything I've learned about PC's so far is it's never that simple.
My question is this then: if I get 12 more gigs in a setup akin (but maybe not exactly like) to pic related, can I just plug the three 4-gig'ers in beside the 4 I already have in there for a grand total of 16? Is there any other considerations to take with plugging in much more RAM, say power-wise? Is it bad to mix and match RAM like this? Are there any brands I should avoid? Am I stupid for going for 4 small cards instead of just plugging in one at the same size?
Hello and welcome to Cred Forums! Right, I'll help ya get started buddy,
First off, it's good to know what RAM you currently have (speccy does a good job at this) because your motherboard will default to the slowest RAM speeds. No point in getting DDR3 1600 if you currently have DDR3 1333.
Secondly, if you got your PC 4-5 years ago, chances are that the GPU will then become the bottleneck after this. Might as well look into getting that replaced too! CPU's kinda stagnated so if it's a Nehelam chip, I'd say it's still relevant to this day.
It's a good idea to take a look to see what RAM your motherboard can accept to start with! Again, speccy would list what board you have so a quick search on that and you'll find all compatible ram sticks. Believe it or not, this is a thing!
Now, don't ask Cred Forums if the RAM will be compatible with the motherboard, as then you honestly would be coming off as a bit lazy. Just find it after you got the specs list from speccy and make sure!
I appreciate this. Like I said, a cursory googling just informed me to unplug old ram and plug in new ram, but I figured there was more to it than that.
So, if I get RAM my motherboard will accept, but it clocks faster than the old shit I leave in there (assuming I even do so), it's still only going to tap the slower 4 gig card only and not even touch the 3 new faster cards? If I manage to find 3 that clock at the same speed as my old stick, will they all be fine left in there together?
Henry Russell
>it's still only going to tap the slower 4 gig card only and not even touch the 3 new faster cards
The wording confuses me a bit but I'll just clarify.
Assuming the current stick is DDR 3 1333 and you say, go for DDR3 1600, the motherboard will de-clock the 1600 to 1333 in order for it to even out.
They will all still be used, but the newer sticks will be somewhat wasted as they'd be clocked at 1333 and not run at their full 1600.
Also, memory modules are never refered to as 'cards' but: >Ram sticks >Memory modules Happen to be the most common ones. It can confuse people sometimes if you say otherwise and Cred Forums likes to try and call your shit out on everything at any point in time to fling a few insults.
Brandon Collins
And I can appreciate the nomenclature correction even. You read me even if I sounded like a retard, I wasn't sure if the mobo reading the slower sticks meant the faster ones wouldn't be read at all.
While I can appreciate the loss of a higher clocked stick being forced to slow down for a less speedy one, is the minor clock speed loss actually that much of a difference to overall performance or is it one of those things you can fudge a little?
Hudson Lee
Thanks, worked great!
Tyler Barnes
>is the minor clock speed loss actually that much of a difference to overall performance or is it one of those things you can fudge a little?
There are hardly any real-world differences (one unique exception being /minor/ changes in FPS in Fallout 4) but nothing too big.
It's just that if you download the program I suggested (speccy) you'll be able to see all your pc specs in a very simple manner.
The main reason I'm encouraging you to KNOW what specs you have is so: >You can see what motherboard you have >Look up said motherboard to know what memory modules are compatible with it >Purchase said module(s) at the correct clock speed
It's just that if you buy higher clocked RAM it'll just be a waste of your cash. If you're scared how 'complex' speccy is, look at my image, it's literally this easy.
Angel Johnson
It's not so much that I'm worried about utilizing speccy as that I'm away from home at the moment posting from my shit-tier laptop. And I do very much appreciate you trying to route me toward doing this shit correctly, that's why I came to Cred Forums in the first place. I've gotten legitimate help from kind anons for other computer issues I've had in the past and I wasn't disappointed this time either.
Thank you for the help friend.
Michael Cooper
while on the subject of ram can somebody explain what CAS latency or such is? what are good numbers to get?
Juan Sanchez
You're not supposed to help Reddit fag, you have to tease him first
Josiah Gutierrez
>everyone who doesn't regularly visit my board must be from reddit
Choke on a bag of soiled dicks you faggot.
Wyatt Gonzalez
Ooh tough guy I like you
Kayden Miller
Just get a 16 gigabyte kit, it's like 70 bucks jesus fucking christ
Anthony Lee
These are for triple channel CPU/motherboards. You probably have dual channeled. You would want to get identical RAM, or better yet, just toss the 1 4GB module you have and get 2x8GB paired RAM. The reason why pairing is important is because you motherboard might decide to put your RAM in single channel.
Oliver Rodriguez
Ah okay! No worries, if you happen to need anything else I'll try and look around for this again or just make a new topic. Though you ought to be able to handle things going forward.
Ethan Smith
Noted. Like I said I have 4 slots on my mobo. Is this single/dual channeled thing a function of what kind of RAM you're putting in (like only 2 identical sticks will be channeled together) or is it a function of the mobo itself (like my 4 slots might be specifically built to dual channel 2 sets of 2 sticks)?
Jack Barnes
>worked on my rx480
Anthony Cooper
Fuck. I downloaded 1.2 TB of RAM but my SSD is only 1 TB. Will this cause any problems? If necessary, how do I uninstall 200 GB RAM?
William Jones
RAM for dual channel will be sold in pairs. You should be able to see two different colored RAM slots on the motherboard. When you put paired RAM in those slots the motherboard will treat it as dual channel RAM. If the RAM is different, even if you have 2 x 4GB modules, it will treat it as single channel and you wont get the benefits of dual channel. This is why it's important to pair up.
Chase Walker
Gotcha gotcha, I think I noticed color coded pairs on the ram slots of my board when I popped the side checking out how much room I had to grow the other day.
Appreciate your help as well user.
Austin Scott
Those are your SPD timings, and have just as much of a speed impact as clock speed. The goal is to shoot as low as stably-possible with a CR of 1T, start from stock timings after setting it to use it's XMP profile, and drop CL, tRCD, and tRP by one, and tRAS by 2, since you can be a lot looser with it
Throw UBCD on a disc/drive and run Memtest+ in multithreaded mode, if it makes a pass without errors, repeat the digit drop until you have an error, roll-back to the last good settings, and lower each timing individually followed by a test until each timing is at it's lowest stable timing, tRAS will be the most forgiving in terms of lower-than-SPD timings
After you're sure this is fine and you've ran Memtest+ a couple times, run Prime95 /!\ 26.6 /!\ in blend mode for an hour or two, ONLY USE 26.6, later versions use AVX, and will turn your CPU into a furnace, all you need is to test your RAM. If it passes with no problems, then enjoy your faster low-latency RAM
If you wanna see the difference it can make, download MaxxMEM 2 and run it before AND after changing timings, there's usually always a pretty good difference between XMP and your tighter settings. You can also try undervolting, but there's a good chance the XMP voltage is mandatory for big 1T timing changes, and the most you'll get is a .2 or .3 decrease
