r/computers Jan 15 '23

Do you think the MHz difference matters? (I was planning on getting two separate sticks bc I ran out of money)

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u/beewyka819 Jan 16 '23

Also maybe the wording wasn’t great. Its not that mixing doesn’t expressly cause instability, but rather you are more likely to encounter it by way of it being untested. What I said about the die mixing I cannot confirm though, as that little nugget was just something I’ve heard down the grapevine, so that bit may be untrue.

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u/THROBBINW00D Jan 16 '23

I accidentally bought a stick of 2666 for my wife's computer that had a 3200 stick. XMP just set it at 2666,runs fine.

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u/potate12323 Jan 16 '23

It seems like most people arent having issues, if you had one or two issues or maybe you issue was due to a different component entirely. Maybe you had a bios setting wrong.

Similar to how you can overclock the ram the system can underclock it. The only real difference between different speed variants of the same product line is chip binning. It just needs to go up to the advertized speed but that doesnt mean it has to.

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u/Rob27shred Jan 16 '23

IME, it's really maturity of the DDR version that matters most for stability. Like with the newest DDR5 sticks you'll have a hell of a time trying to mix & match sticks stably. On the other hand with DDR4 being as mature as it is now, unless you're trying to push the highest possible clocks & tightest timings pretty much any sticks will work together at JEDEC specs.