Mixing RAM
Mixing RAM
I own an i9 9900 PC setup with two Corsair 8 GB RAM sticks, CL16 2666 MHz. I purchased Kingston Fury RAM for a good price. My question is whether mixing different brands will cause any compatibility problems. My configuration has the two Corsair sticks in slot 1 and the two Kingston sticks in slots 2 and 4.
If you already have the RAM installed, I'd go ahead. My 9900k supports 48GB, and all four sticks are from Corsair with distinct chip types. They offer a 3000 and a 3200 kit. I managed to get them working smoothly at 3200. In the worst scenario, it might be unstable—just take out the two 8GB sticks.
There can be, it could just be fine. There's only one way to find out. In my experience with DDR4 the odds of it working are something like 80% that everything works as expected, 15% that it turns on but XMP doesn't work (that's assuming a 3200-3600 rated kit, the odds should be a bit better for XMP to work at a speed that low), and 5% that it doesn't even turn on. It should more than likely work, but there is a chance that it won't work. If it doesn't work, stick to the two Kingston sticks and you should be OK.
It turned out to be a poor decision. I experienced performance drops on my PC after installing new RAM, especially when usage increased. Restarting helped temporarily but was frustrating. Initially, I suspected another problem, but after removing the RAM, everything normalized. Now I’ve purchased two more Corsair RAM sticks, and things are working fine.