Having 24GB of RAM

[AngelfireUk83]

I recently just upgraded to Corsair Vengence 16gb PRO Red 1600mhz DDR3 got it on sale at £100 down from £130 new I used to have Crucial Ballistix 8GB 1866mhz DDR3 before in fact I still have that and my plan was to sell it but I am now going to keep it as a back up, at the moment I am not sure if the 16GB is faster timing are 9-9-9-24 and I would have to out my 8GB back in to find the timings for that kit also I didnt run it at 1866 but 1600mhz. Just wondering what the trade off's would be if I installed the 2 kits I assume

1) Probably may not post due to different brands been used
2) Pointless
3) RAM would run in Single Channel and not Dual
4) Timings maybe off

 

[EarthDog]

1. Maybe. it isn't so much the brand as it is the difference in speed and timings between the two. You can run at 1600 Mhz for all or try to tweak all for 1866.
2. Also maybe... if you are close to using 16GB adding more would help... if you are not, it is pointless
3. Why would it run in single channel? Aren't there four sticks? If there is three, I think the platform runs in mixed mode where the first 16GB in the primary slots are dual and the single stick is single channel
4. That (and speed in general) can be worked with...

 

[mackerel]

You can try looking at the module ratings in CPU-Z or Thaiphoon Burner.

Agree if going above 16GB will help depends on if you use a lot of ram or not. Keep in mind that otherwise unused ram will be used by the OS as a file cache, although its impact is more significant for hard disks than SSDs.

In theory, the system should use the lowest common denominator settings between the different ram. In my laptop, I have a 2400 1R module paired with a 2133 2R module, and it still manages to run them in dual channel, at the lower speed of the two.

 

[AngelfireUk83]

You can try looking at the module ratings in CPU-Z or Thaiphoon Burner.

Agree if going above 16GB will help depends on if you use a lot of ram or not. Keep in mind that otherwise unused ram will be used by the OS as a file cache, although its impact is more significant for hard disks than SSDs.

In theory, the system should use the lowest common denominator settings between the different ram. In my laptop, I have a 2400 1R module paired with a 2133 2R module, and it still manages to run them in dual channel, at the lower speed of the two.

How you do find your laptop when running that set-up do you see any slow down??

I have Windows 7 on it's own 128GB SSD it has about 32GB free only because I play ARMA 3 and it seems to be more or slightly better when playing off a SSD over a mech drive, I am looking into a 240GB SSD next month so I can upgrade the OS SSD and be a little bit more future proof as the Crucial is good but it's got a broken SATA connector help with sticky tape in place. It's lasted over 3 years but I want to put my mind as ease and buy a new one I will mess around at the weekend and see how it runs so some benchmarks etc with the 16GB by it's self, then see what the 8GB kit did and then mix it up and do the full 24gb and maybe run MEMTEST and see if they hold out.

 

[mackerel]

How you do find your laptop when running that set-up do you see any slow down??

In normal use, I can't say I notice a difference between having the single or dual channel with mismatched ram. I did it in part, because I had the ram spare anyway. Also, I hoped the extra bandwidth even at lower speed would help give it that bit more performance when gaming. I ended up doing a before and after set of benchmarks, summarised as follows.



SC 2400 is the original configuration, a single module of 2400 (which was later determined to be single rank). DC 2133 is after I added a 2133 module, later found out to be a dual rank module. The ram speed and timing dropped from 2400C17 to 2133C15. For context, CPU was i5-7300HQ (4 core, no HT, 2.5 base, 3.1 all core turbo, 3.5 single core turbo) and GPU was 1050 2GB. The laptop was the cheapest I could find that was capable of running FFXIV at 1080p 60fps+ at reduced settings. I didn't want to throw cash at it after my previous much more expensive laptop became a brick, and I didn't really use it that much. More about the laptop at https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/917235-asus-fx503vd-budget-gaming-laptop/