Well I have 4gb of ram in my PC and it's in one dim, it's the Crucial Ballistix sport and it's running at 1866 mhz. Can I get a kingston 4gb stick and have it still work or does everything have to be the same? It's also running at 1866 mhz.
you can mix and match brands - but if you mix speeds both will run at the slower stick speed, and if you mix timings you will suffer a performance hit as well. this will probably be fine for gaming - if you are doing any serious work I would not if they are too different. You can also try to set the timings to the same values.
mixing brands =
normally, I don't edit posts like this, but you risk an unstable system from that advice. harmful advice is harmful. --Commissar
Are the timings and the voltage the same? If not at least one stick would have to run out of spec and you should check what your mobo set them at.
Everything is literally the same. The only thing that is different are the looks :/
sometimes there are little things that make them incompatible. ALWAYS get the same brand, and model, if possible as currently installed ram.
I never had a problem mixing RAM the only thing is that all the memory will run at the speed of the slowest stick.
You can try.
I tried mixing some Gskill with some patriot together. both 8GB, 1866, cas9 (9,10,9,27) kits. Didn't work. didn't even post to the bios.
what i never had a problem mixing ram. but ram is cheap so its not a big deal to get matching set.
TL;DR. mixing ram is like taking two teenage middle school girls and forcing them to work together. they're either going to work moderately well or are going to render themselves inert until split apart.
It is a gamble. If you do, the motherboard will set all the timings, speed and voltage to the lowest stick to make for better stability. I have a mixed batch of ram in my rig, and I haven't got any instabilities. Just be cautious with that. If you don't overclock you should be fine. But results will vary
Fair enough - but I have never had an issue from it - my old junker is still kicking about with a stick of Kingston ram and a stick of zeppelin ram in it.........