DDR3 RAM

[cnico88]

I have 3 sticks of DDR3 RAM in my Intel DX48BT2 board. They are 2GB Corsair 1600Mhz at 1.65 volts and 8-8-8-24 timings. That gives me 6 GB or RAM. I have another older stick laying around and I was wondering if I can plug it in since I have one slot left. It is a 1GB Corsair 1600Mhz at 1.8 volts and 9-9-9-24.

Apart from timings and voltage they are almost the same. Would that make a difference or would my board support if I run them with different voltage and timings.

Let me know, thanks.

 

[philbar71]

hmm, well adding another stick of ram is not going to make a huge diff, not when you have 6gb allready. but if you felt the need to then you could throw it in and the mobo would set the all of the ram speeds to the slowest stick.

 

[cnico88]

I know it won't make a big difference but would it be worth it to have 7GB at 9-9-9-24 or 6GB at 8-8-8-24 ?

 

[philbar71]

well actually now that i think about it your ram is not running in dual channel. if you throw that other stick in there it can run in dual channel. but either way it is not going to be a noticeable difference.

 

[cnico88]

So when it comes to the voltage, because they are different, the mobo will just set that up or will I need to set it manually in the BIOS?

 

[philbar71]

well i'm not 100% sure on the voltage, but my guess is that it will set the voltage to the default of the board. for exaple, my gigabyte p45 uses DDR3 and no matter what kind of DDR3 ram i put in there it always sets the ram voltage at 1.5v. even though my OCZ plats are rated for 1.8v the default is 1.5v and i have to manually set the voltage.

 

[Luke]

^i believe you are correct on that. If you put the 1gb stick in there, it would not run in dual channel, they have to be the same size dimm's, so you would need another 2gb dimm. Your timmings would also take a hit, so i would stick with the 6gb mate.

 

[wafflehammer]

why duel channel? shouldn't it be running in triple?

 

[cnico88]

old x48 motherboard. Doesn't support triple channel. Only core i7 does that.

 

[Slaymate]

Remove the 2GB stick you added. More ram is not always better.