Still a good Idea to buy a new 4x4 kit rather than get a new set of twos?

Looking to expand my ram to 16 gigs. I'm finding with emulators and photoshop Munch away at my ram like it were thanksgiving.

Is it still the norm to buy a new 4x4 kit rather than buying another 2x4 to slot in next to the older sticks? I'd be buying two more of the same sticks via order history.

Looking to save a buck if its safe to do that.

Yes you can just buy 2X4, just purchase the same sticks of memory that you have.

You can do that, or sell what you have and get 2x8gb in case you will expand again before you are done using the system...

Actually I wanted to ask a question similar to this.
As I did some Google search myself, what I found was that people saying it's not recommended to " mix match " RAM kits even they are identical in specs ( Frequency, Timing etc )

So is that true ?
For example, if I wanted to fill all my RAM slot with total of 32GB, I should get ONE SINGLE 4X8GB Kit instead of TWO 2X8GB Kit ?

And let's say if I want 16GB of RAM, what's the difference if I were to use 4X4GB and 2X8GB ? and normally 2X8GB would be cheaper as well.

I would just purchase the single 4X8GB kit, it has been tested together so there is less chance of trouble with the memory working together. Unless you just want to add ram then go with the same manufacture also type it should work fine.

With 2X8 16GB you will have ram slots open for the future if you want to add more of the same ram.

wingman99 said:

I would just purchase the single 4X8GB kit, it has been tested together so there is less chance of trouble with the memory working together. Unless you just want to add ram then go with the same manufacture also type it should work fine.

With 2X8 16GB you will have ram slots open for the future if you want to add more of the same ram.

Click to expand...

If I want it to run Dual Channel, I must fill up all 4X DIMM slots right ??
But then again, when it comes to strictly GAMING purpose, I think the performance difference isn't even noticeable ?

To run Dual channel all you need is (two sticks) in the correct slots. For gaming all you need 16GB of ram. While your gaming you can look at your task manger to see how much ram the PC is using.

wingman99 said:

To run Dual channel all you need is (two sticks) in the correct slots. For gaming all you need 16GB of ram. While your gaming you can look at your task manger to see how much ram the PC is using.

Click to expand...

Yeah about that...I'm currently using 16GB already myself on DDR3, doesn't seem to have any game that even use up much as 8GB there are some.
But then again, alot of new games lately recommend 16GB of RAM as well, so I'm wondering is now 16GB even actually enough?

What weird is, why is it that the more RAM you have the more it will consume ?? Just look at this video, if you had like 32GB of RAM, the game will consume even more than a 16GB system, it even used up total of 11GB of RAM ( Including System usage of course )
But then again, it didn't benefit him in any sort of way though.
So this made me had doubt that in my future upgrade ( Moving to Skylake basically ) should I even still stick with 16GB or go with 32GB instead.

Here watch this video here.

Some new games are using ~10GB max while OS files are using about 1.5-2GB. Noone will say it requires 10GB simply because in most popular configurations there is 8 and 16GB. If you have dual channel platform then best is to get 2x8GB. If you want more then on DDR3 platform you are limited to 4x8GB while on DDR4 better is to get 2x16GB.
When you have more RAM then system is usually using some more RAM just because it can.

Anyway you can mix memory kits as long as you know that specification is similar. In theory all memory kits are compatible with JEDEC what means all should work together at JEDEC settings what in most popular series is something like 1600 11-11-11 or for DDR4 2133 15-15-15. Simply the same what you can get leaving memory at auto settings.
In real memory design and used IC affect compatibility. In time memory density is raising so using one old and one new memory kit is not always possible. Two different memory kits are usually working at the settings of slower kit but noone will guarantee stability.

Gh0sT-NoVa said:

Yeah about that...I'm currently using 16GB already myself on DDR3, doesn't seem to have any game that even use up much as 8GB there are some.
But then again, alot of new games lately recommend 16GB of RAM as well, so I'm wondering is now 16GB even actually enough?

What weird is, why is it that the more RAM you have the more it will consume ?? Just look at this video, if you had like 32GB of RAM, the game will consume even more than a 16GB system, it even used up total of 11GB of RAM ( Including System usage of course )
But then again, it didn't benefit him in any sort of way though.
So this made me had doubt that in my future upgrade ( Moving to Skylake basically ) should I even still stick with 16GB or go with 32GB instead.

Here watch this video here.

Click to expand...

I watched the Video and you can't go off that, could be windows 10 memory compression causing the FPS 4 difference with a badly coded game that is recommended for 4GBs. Most people don't try games with not enough memory so they don't know what the experience is. When you don't have enough system memory the game stalls for a longer period of time.

What happens is while playing a game you have movement data loads from system memory if the data is not in system memory it reads from the hard drive that is slower however usually the game will read ahead so you don't have a game stall. When your system memory is full from the game, example would be 8GB of system memory and the game is using 8GB, playing still might be fine if you don't have a long stalls or continuous stalling from the game reading or swapping (called paging) the data with the hard drive.

There is another problem if you don't have enough video memory you have hitching in the game, it is like a stall however the stall is much faster than a system memory stall because the game transfers data from system memory to Video ram.

The last thing is windows 10 uses system memory compression when you use over the maximum amount.

So to sum it up if you don't have enough system memory the games will stall for a longer period of time compared to just hitching with video ram, also when a game stalls it lowers your minimum FPS or average.

Woomack said:

Some new games are using ~10GB max while OS files are using about 1.5-2GB. Noone will say it requires 10GB simply because in most popular configurations there is 8 and 16GB. If you have dual channel platform then best is to get 2x8GB. If you want more then on DDR3 platform you are limited to 4x8GB while on DDR4 better is to get 2x16GB.
When you have more RAM then system is usually using some more RAM just because it can.

Anyway you can mix memory kits as long as you know that specification is similar. In theory all memory kits are compatible with JEDEC what means all should work together at JEDEC settings what in most popular series is something like 1600 11-11-11 or for DDR4 2133 15-15-15. Simply the same what you can get leaving memory at auto settings.
In real memory design and used IC affect compatibility. In time memory density is raising so using one old and one new memory kit is not always possible. Two different memory kits are usually working at the settings of slower kit but noone will guarantee stability.

Click to expand...

Yeah I'm kinda of a victim of this.

" In time memory density is raising so using one old and one new memory kit is not always possible. "

My 2nd 8GB Kit RAM, had a tighter timing...I was lucky enough that I'm able to boot up and have them both running together without issues.
I didn't bother adjusting the Timing as well, but so far it had been years and It was fine. Call me lucky I guess lol.

Sadly If I wanted 32GB DDR4 I can't get 2X 16GB, I will have to buy a 4X 8GB Kit, it's super expensive as well...really suck honestly, in my country there isn't much RAM choices and not many Kits as well.
Most expect you to buy them separately and mix match them.

So basically those 4X Kits are actually for Quad Channel builds then ??
I mean those 4X Kits are lot more expensive than a 2X Kit even both are same Capacity and Frequency.

They price the quad sticks higher do to testing them together and lower demand.