Slightly Different Memory Sticks. Seeking Advise, Criticism and Commentary.

Smart_Guy

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Dear All:

I had 2x2GB Kingston HyperX Blu KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G (linked to its data sheet) kit installed one year ago and now I looked everywhere for the same as a kit or even separately, but could not find any anywhere.

I, however, managed to get 2x4GB of kit Kingston HyperX T1 KHX1600C9D3T1BK3/12GX (linked as well) which is almost the same (Frequency, timing and of course brand).

I installed the first 2x2GB kit in slots 1 & 3 then the newer couple in 2 & 4.

So far everything seems pretty much stable and satisfying; no beeps, lock ups, slowdowns, restarts, etc., and from the first try the system managed to read the 12GB just fine. Tests included hours of modern gaming (id's Rage), hours of movies and Winrar compression while installing Win7 x64 in a virtual machine.

The later set is apparently the more advanced one and at least it has a bigger heat sink and XMP feature supported (dunno what that is, but it's there).

Some how I feel a better configuration could be done here and I did what I did by researching and not actual technical experience.

With my system mentioned in my signature, I would like to hear Advise, Criticism and Commentary (if any).

Thank you in advance.
 
When you mix RAM, you take the risk of introducing errors, as I'm sure you're aware. But the other thing worth mentioning here is that the newer RAM will clock itself down (both in speed and/or timings) to the abilities of the slower RAM. In some cases, depending on what you're doing, more RAM is helpful, but you have to consider how fast the RAM is running overall. The more RAM slots are populated, the more stress you put on the memory controller. "Stress" in this case is a relative term, since both Intel and AMD's integrated memory controllers are pretty robust these days.

If you don't see any problems with the setup, and are happy with the performance, by all means, keep it as is. I don't see anything wrong with it as it stands.
 
Thanks OG.

As a matter of fact, I am well aware of the risk. But to minimize it, I intended to get similar speed and timing, so that no automatic actions are taken. The only difference is the XMP feature and I disabled it in the bios. According to my calculations, the risk should be close to zero and I started this thread to make it even closer, and apparently it did.

The speed and timing are identical and I set the voltage to a fixed amount in the bios to make sure all sticks get the same amount.

Kingston is a respectable brand that cares about compatibility.
 
I've had mixed results with Kingston over the years, lately G.Skill has been getting my money, but in your case, going with matched maker and type of DIMM was your best decision. You should be fine from the sounds of it. :)
 
I agree with OG, really the only criticism is mixing of the types of sticks, but overall, it's not that big of a deal. Personally, I prefer Mushkin, but I have no gripes about Kingston or even GSkill for that matter.
 
Thanks for the comments.

My purpose was to upgrade 4GB to 8GB. First I looked around but couldn't find matching memory to just add them so I got some OCZ ones and man it gave me hell. Default settings caused BSDs all the time with those and I had to heavily alter the bios (contacting OCZ support directly) to get just an almost stable Windows 7 x64 with light applications and games. Heavy games got crashes to the desktop after 10-15 minutes as well as some Nvidia graphics driver resets.

When I finally had enough of it, I looked again and lucky me I found the mentioned almost similar ones but in different sizes. The similarity opened the door to test add the new 8GB to the old ones instead of removing the latter. 12GB is some how too much for me, but if it can be done with out loses then be it.

Too bad though that core i5 750 can't get the memory speed to more than 1333MHz.

In general, I'm more than happy with it (thumbs up).
 
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