Can you mix 2 identical RAM kits? 

Once again, it's always a random small channel that is more useful than the bigger and more mainstream channels. Thank you.

I believe 90% of techtubers are really just basic users with an audience usually obtained by having a goofy/silly personality and a [confusing] passion for tech. I can't yell you the last time i really learned anything in say, a build video. I like this video for calling out those other channels.

I updated to ddr4 in 2019, the I bought the same 16 gb kit in 2021, and is still working perfectly.

wow looking for about half an hour for a video that just explains it in a real scenario, always a small channel with the most helpful content 👍 saved me a lot of time

Wow, actually someone who answered a relevant question. Great work and, love your build!

There is one important detail you left out. The ram you bought also comes in a 4x8gb kit, model number CMK32GX4M4B3200C16, which happens to be on your motherboard's QVL. If you're upgrading from 16gb to 32gb like this, make absolutely certain that the 4x8gb version of your kit is supported by your motherboard - sometimes its not.

2 Years ago I studied a course for Computer Technician. I finished it but I can't say i'm experienced in terms of computer. But, i'm pretty sure I learned that when adding more rams, it is advisable we get the same brand/model. Now I'm here double confirming if my memory is serving me right. The intro answered my question LOL.

That is correct, but you should also mention, that sometimes finding excatly same kit of RAM is very difficult, also in some country's if it is sold out "impossible". That's why in my opinion spending right away ( for example; double money ), and not ever worry if it will be enough, and spending time trying to find same kit, it's worth it getting more RAM than person currently needs.

It's crazy how i had to watch 6-7 videos of 10+ mins each just to decide buying the same kit of x2 8gb i already had so i could upgrade from 16 to 32 gb ram, and then i decide to double check and watch 1 more video and find this, the exact same kit i bought, in a shorter video, better explained and with a relaxing voice. Thank you man

I know I’m late but thanks so much for not adding fluff and getting straight to the point.

Sad to see you don’t post anymore. But thanks for the straight to the point video, appreciate it man.

Thank you! I could not find a 128g kit of g-skill ddr5 6400 so I bought 2 64gig kits and assumed it should be fine. I have been looking for this answer for ever. You hear and see alot of mismatched ram etc but little to nothing of same kit ram. My 2 ram kits serial numbers are even in chronological order. Last 3 digits are, (197, 198 kit 1), (199 ,200 kit 2), so I got them all off the same line in chronological order which is awesome. So by the way you installed yours the first kit was in A2 and B2 for dual channel mode. And the second kit went into A1 and B1 instead of any random order even if they are all the same.

What i would like to see is using same manufacturer, model, speed but with different sizes like 16GB kit(8+8 sticks) + 32GB kit(16+16 sticks).

Very informative and straight to the point. I recently did this 16 to 32 ram update and used the same kit as you. I like the low profile of the Vengeance ram.

Absolutely helpful. I got two pkgs of the same ram when I bought it, just because it was on sale. It was my first computer build in years. It used to be ok but wasn't aware of these other issues I started to learn about. So I thought I did something wrong. Your the first one to point this part out. Because like you I haven't seen anything wrong. And it loaded the XMP right out of the gate. After I turned it on. So thanks for the vid.

ive done this with adata for several years now and always works fine 😅 glad there is a video about a Normal ram upgrade

Amazing how technology has advanced and now does it all for you without having to apply too much if any effort at all. Over a decade ago I done something that wasn't recommended and mixed different speeds of ddr2 ram from different manufacturers to populate all the dim slots on my gigabyte mobo, my memory downclocked to the ram sticks with the slowest speed, my PC ran fine and surprisingly never crashed or blue screened when I thought it would.

DDR4 is very forgiving. The main thing to remember is try to stick with the same kit if you can and if you cant then at least stick with the same speeds and timings. Even now with prices for RAM super low a 4 DIMM kit is still expensive and even just getting two of the same 2 DIMM kits at the same time often will be cheaper, and in some cases could even be half the cost. If you are adding ram in the future and can not find the exact same kit however you can mix kits but will have to be prepared for running everything at lower speeds or timings if the added kit does not match up to what it says it can do. So if your only option is to just buy another kit because your kit is not available any more make sure all of your ram is from well established venders as they will be more likely to preform to what is printed on the box. Though even then that may not be the case depending on your motherboard, CPU, and just getting unlucky. I had a 16gb kit of ADATA that was rated for 3000 but it only ran at 2666; still better then the DDR4 default of 2132 but not what is printed on the label either. You may also have to manually adjust everything if the kits do not match as XMP likely wont work correctly with mismatched kits Also for those who are unaware DDR4 is only rated for 2132 which is the default. Anything higher then that is factory overclocked from the base standard. Additionally if you are looking in your system and you see a much lower number like 1600MHz that is correct as the printed number (3200 in this case) is double what the actual speed is as the DD stands for double density. Your BIOS should display the full number if you are using XMP though.

This is EXACTLY what im looking for. I want two ram in black and two in white. Same kit, speed, manufacturer, etc.

This is the exact info I was looking for, and from what I can tell it is the only video answering this on YT. You got a sub from here!

This is exactly the question I was looking answers for. Thanks.

I upgraded to 32 Gb last year but I couldn't get the exact timings. But it is the same MFG and brand but what I had was 3200 and the other 16 Gb kit is 3400. Now I hated to do it but in this case I knew that it would all work but I would not see any of that 3400 performance because it will bring them all to the same sppeds and timings. But hey. Works greak. And it was Ripjaw by the way.

Great video! You helped a great deal as I'm the in the boat you were in. Thank you for being straight to the point with great info! You answered questions I had when upgrading RAM; I even have the same exact brand and model you have, though mine is 3000 MHz and red. But good to know that I can now comfortably purchase another 16 GB to add more RAM!

Added 2x8 DDR4 3600 Corsair Vengeance to my existing 2x8 on my AMD B550 MB. Now have 32GB and all runs fine.

This has always how I have done my upgrades. I buy how much I need when I build the pc, and double it later down the line as requirements grow. DDR3 was 8gb to 16gb, and DDR4 was 16gb to 32gb. The one caveat is that you should still try to keep the sticks as a pair, as mixing between the two sets can, but not always, cause issues. For example, kit #1 you might put in slots 1 and 3 to keep as a pair, and kit#2 you put in slots 2 and 4. A lot of kits will have some sort of version numbers on them so you can tell which set are a kit even if you get them mixed up. Worst comes to worst you can always swap between DIMM slots until it posts correctly.

I think it goes without saying that the exact same model of RAM will work together, yeah. When most people ask if they can mix RAM, usually it's whatever RAM they have and the cheapest RAM available, thus they'll probably use a different brand. Of course it will cause problem. Good video, eitherway.

What is said in this video is mostly true, however I have a ryzen 9 5900x cpu and I'm running 2 separate identical kits of ram. The 2 identical kits i'm running on that cpu are the following speed, capacity, and timings. Each kit is a separate identical kit of 32GB 2x16GB 4000Mhz CL18. I have 2 identical kits installed and running right now. That makes a makeshift ram kit with 4 sticks of ram. So it then becomes 64GB 4x16GB 4000Mhz CL18. I can run just fine with one kit of that ram on my cpu. Then i when added the second kit of ram, my cpu then became extremely hard to get running smoothly. For not very many people 4000mhz with 2 sticks of ram with 32GB can run stably. Be it 2 kits of ram at that speed, amount, and timings. For smaller amount and speeds this method of mixing 2 identical ram kit would be fine like shown in the video. Similar things apply to DDR5 too, DDR5 ram is lot more picky about combining 2 separate identical ram kits. Therefore this video is mostly true. Just remember not to follow all advice you see on the internet. Sometimes that advice would be mostly true as in the case in this youtube video.

I did the same but I used 32 gig kits. I went from 32 to 64 with the exact same kit of DDR4 G.Skill 3600. Everything worked but the XMP would not take. The 3600 memory insisted on running at 2100. I didn't have good luck and you did. Oh well, it worked in another build I was doing so no loss really. I am at 32 gigs and staying there.

You definitely can mix and match memory from different manufacturers. No harm to your system. I’ve done it on several occasions, and have never experienced any issues

Great video! I have the same problem, the RAM kit I have is not available right now but they have the black color one!

Thank you. None of these big channels I've seen discussed idetntial ram kits. It's crazy

I'm doing this exact thing with my current build. I got a deal on two packs of 2 sticks for 4 sticks of total ram. I expect the XMP to work on the first boot, if not I will lower the ghz a little worst case scenario, with the XMP on. I've done this on past builds when getting a deal on PC parts. Just doing the best I can with my resources.

thank you. thats what i was searchin for. great video

My prebuilt came with 32gb ddr5. Just added another 32gb ddr5 two days ago and thankfully so far working fine. Had no messages upon boot up. 64gb total

I think I may be running the same memory as you. It's actually really good chance your running Samsung b-die; They are usually good at overclocking 3200 cl16 cranked up to 3800 cl14. Can't remember been a few years.

GPU-Z is great. Have found many boards, even if you pick the XMP profile when leaving the timings to auto, on start-up the timings when checked in CPU-Z may be looser than the XMP profile. Recently added 2 additional sticks of Hyper Fury and discovered even though the sticks had identical timings at 3602 that was highest clock for one pair, whereas the 2nd pair had higher clock on 2nd XMP setting of 3730. Running the 2 pairs at 3600MHz without issue. As long as you run identical sticks in pairs and run at what speed and timings the weakest of the RAM can handle don't see much of an issue mixing and matching.

I Purchased two identical 16GB kits of the same RAM as you running at 3200 CL-16-18-18 but now my system performs slightly worse then my 16GB 2133 CL 14 kit 😞

this is true for am4 motherboards with good memory controllers like that tomahawk but ive witnessed instances with ddr5 on am5 that will either not boot into the os, get a ram or cpu error light, or only run on base frequency (tested on 4x16gb of same brand, model and chip manufacturer).

Same thing with me! I had some money to burn so I upgraded from 16GB to 128GB... but all wasn't fun for me. Reaching limits like that are a little dangerous. I had frequent and random crashes on Windows, with completely random error codes. Some OS corruption occurred but thankfully no data loss and a quick sfc command fixed my machine up. The solution was to look at my CPU's specification, and limit the clock speed of the RAM to the maximum value on the specification. I.e. 4x32GB sticks @3200 MHz with an Intel i9-10900k **must** be underclocked to 2933 MHz.

Kit have vers8on numbers, if same version, yes it ok. If version difference, it could be because of different ram manufacturer chips... You can also put in different ram chip brands, but depending on board option. You may ha e to setup to your rams worst settings... Like if you got 16 24 24 64, and 2nd kit , 18 26, 22, 74 So you put in 18 26,24,74 timings Run mem86 plus pro , use 1 cpu only for testing. (P.s if you don't run ram test (say 4 loops), Windows will still work, but it can cause stability issues, or corruption when you save data.

I feel more confident now adding my old corsair vengeance 16gb 3600mhz to my current corsair vengeance 32gb 3600mhz. Gonna go ahead & install it tomorrow. I will update this if all goes well.

Well I upgraded to the same ram same mhz same brand same cl16 3200 ddr4 just did 32gb instead and luckily that worked automatically which makes sense it's the same ram just more of it lol. You will always have more issues adding 2 new on top aka 4 sticks instead of just using 2 ram sticks exact same but 32gb instead with 2 sticks. The reason it worked for you is exactly why it did for me. It does auto and boom perfect.

thank you for this video man, the bit where you talked about other RU-vidrs mixing completely different rams was so true it made me laugh

I also bought the same kit 2 years later and ran into a ton of problems (BSOD frequently). Haven't nailed down if it's a problem with the newest kit or just a problem with the different kits working together. So it may just be hit or miss for everybody.

Thank you for this, I did the exact same thing with the same Corsair sticks (only 2133 instead of 3200), but sadly your conclusion didn’t apply to me. My Motherboard recognised all sticks just fine and ran intensive games perfectly without any issues, but Chrome would randomly crash my PC and in general my PC would have random power shutdowns until my PSU would kick in and activate the safety measure. Eventually I even had a BSoD and couldn’t solve it without removing the 2 new sticks again. I ran the old 2x8 sticks for 4 years and never had any issues, so it was no coincidence. I thought the new 2x8 sticks may have been defect, but I decided to run my PC with just the new 2x8 sticks instead as a test, and more than a year later I have never had these issues again. Till this day I haven’t tried running the 4x8 config again because I’m scared to permanently brick my PC, and I still haven’t found any reason as to why 4x8 with two identical dual kits was not functioning flawlessly for me. Maybe I should try it again? Any ideas as to why I may have had these issues?

Literally just attempted this with a Gskill Trident Z 2x8gb x2 kits....and caused crashes galore. And ALL the specs are the same. Now I am on to attempting to loosen timings in order to get the two sets to work.

Mine are same as you have but my 1st kit was 2x8 kit my 2cnd kit was 2x16 both were 3200mhz total of 48 gb Works fine. A & C channel has 2x16 kit B&D has the 2x8 kit. Bought 4 years apart .👍

I've done this exact same thing and ran into nothing but problems. so your mileage may vary. I bought the exact same kit of ram for my system and the XMP will not even post. I am trying to figure out now how to get it to post and become stable.

The Takeaway is that you can Most certenly do this on DDR4 but it might very well be Diffrent story on DDR5. as you are very likely to run into issues with 2 identical kits if you enable XMP on DDR5. you might get lucky and it works but chances are slim as of right now at least. but you can just disable XMP and try your luck with manual setting the ram settings!

The answer is yes, tho youll meet instabilities. the incompatibility tho often get fixed by updating BIOS.

They are not mentioning what memory chips they are using on the box, you can buy first batch hynix and the second one samsung or whatever it will have different timing potential, but it should work with xmp enabled. If you want to overclock it can definitely matter.

you can actually mix RAM from other manufacturers, you just need the same spd and timings. I had a 2x8gb from Avixer and just added 2x16gb from lexar, all are CL16 and 3200mhz all works great without issues.

I just bought the same kit of ram acouple days ago and it just arrived and i wanted to check if i could just plug it in thank you for answering.

Ram is a confusing thing. Good video. 👍👏 I just put 4 dimms (2 kits, same manufacturer, same oem. Different age) into my Ryzen 2700x (linux server) and xmp 3200 didnt work, memtest found countless errors. So i switched manually to 3000 MHz, that seems to work. Happens with old Ryzens sometimes. The same dimms were running perfectly in an old I7 7700k build at xmp 3200. What i cant figure, the kit i switched back into the I7 didnt work with xmp 3200 also, even though it was running perfectly a year ago in this machine and in any other machine i tried. The heck😄

a kit is just a deal on 2 ram sticks. if the specs are the same and you combine 2 of the same kits, your really just making it one 4 ram stick kit.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

What bothers me a bit is that rams that come in kits (of 2 or 4) have different part codes than single sticks of same product, I am thinking there is a slight chance that a kit of 4 might be tunned (or hand picked) in detail to have the exact same speed tolerance / variations, where 4 individual sticks of exact same product might have higher variations of frequencies / top speeds. They run at extreme speeds so I am thinking they are extra sensitive about running at exact same step.

I took the same path as you, with the same Corsair kits. Also with no issues, once I enabled XMP. My only hesitation is whether, with all four slots populated, I should have put the two kits into the same channels, instead of dual channeling each kit. So if you did that you'd have your two white and two black DIMMS in adjacent instead of alternate slots. Would that provide any benefit over your (and my) current setup?

I have a 2 stick 32gb ddr5 5600mhz vengence kit installed....went on amazon and REORDERED the same kit...and my pc wont boot. Keyboard doesnt turn on, nothing. The only difference I can see is that the "old" kit has ver 5 and the "new" kit says ver 4

I keep hearing that memory controller is stressed when you have four sticks of ram filled. Is that true or false?

Brand is not important as long as the specs are the same. speed, capacity and timing.

I have purchased the exact same Kingston fury beast cl17 3600 ram and it doesn't work stable with 4 sticks at 3600mhz only at 3000mhz xmp. This is not an absolute . Maybe with Corsair. Either set works individually at 3600 in a1 and B1. I'm going to try a matching set in a1/2 and same again b1/2 fingers crossed I can get full speed.

You just posted the video for the exact issue I was facing, now I wish I had the option to get white ram as well xD

I have been using 4X8gb Hyperx Fury since 2020 till recently, the PC came with two sticks, other two were second hand (same brand and capacity) and added by myself. for quite a long time I had to deal with a mysterious problem causing my Alienware R10 unable to boot from time to time, sometimes it boots once in 5 attempts. For this I’ve talked to dell support team and many other people, however never found an answer. Recently when I tried to upgrade my pc, I’ve noticed one of four rams has in fact 2666 speed while other 3 have 2600. ( the guy who sold them to me didn’t let me know). After eliminating the one of 2666, I have never experienced the booting problem since then. So my experience told me never to mix RAM speeds.

Legit had this exact question - thanks for the video

You can use any brand as long as its the same ddr and mhz

Exactly what i needed, im gonna be saving money since its cheaper to buy 2 of the same kit here with sale and voucher going on thank you very much

If you buy the same one there is still no guarantee that they are the exact same memory chips under the headspreader, what makes the matter worse is that the company selling you these "never validated these for 4x8GB" even tough they might sell a similar kit? Well if the "similar kit" has higher CAS you could manually adjust them to the 4x8GB kit XMP settings and if they are indeed same memory chips it should work.

I've done the same, same ram, same brand, same latency and I'm having the BSOD, so I would say it's a matter of luck, is more likely to work but not necessarily so

It was $20 more to get the 32 gb kit, so I just got that lol I did the same thing as you!

I bought 16GB of gskill aegis cheapo 3000MHz cl16 in 2018. It was a Bdie kit. The other 16 GB that I have bought a week ago is using a hynix A die. I don't know why, but they don't work together unfortunately.

This is the RAM I have HyperX Fury DDR4 2933MHz 16GB, but I cant Find a place too buy more of it

I stumbled onto a new problem. I thought I bought the same DDR4 memory, same speed and manufactor. But there is only 1 difference. The version! On my old mem it says version 4.41 and on the new ones version 5.42. That somehow doesn't mix well. So I'm stuck on the bootmenu when trying to use all 4 of them.

THANK YOUUUUU i was looking for this 🙌🏽

Not so lucky here. Same Ryzen 5 3600 but using Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz. Brought another exact kit to fill up the other 2 slots (A1, B1) and use it fine for like a month before I get random BSOD and random reboots. My motherboard QVL shows only support for 2x8GB for this Vengeance LPX, not 4x8GB. Wasted 16GB.

Sadly it's not working with my Corsair vengeance DDR5 ram kit

aw man, this is the only vid closer to my issue, I wanna add 2 same 8 gb ram same module individually and not in a kit. since the kit is way more expensive than getting the same ram individually

I (literally 5mins ago, ironically) just put in 32GB of identical ram to my original 16GB, to make sure they worked. And the mobo didn't even revert from the docp profile either.

I do the same thing today. corsair vengeance 3200. 32gb to 64gb. past the kit i have before in slot 1 and 2, and the new one in slot 3 and 4. 64gb total. same ram brand reference etc. But now in slot 1 and 2 they are in sngle mode, but in 3 and 4 dual channel. How i can get all in dual chanel? tks

I had quite the different experience. My system already had 2X8GB Corsair vengeance rgb pro 3600mhz C18 so I bought the exact same kit. After some troublesome installation I managed to get my pc to post only to find that the xmp profile was defaulting to 2666mhz. The highest frequency I managed to get was 3400mhz C18. I tried increasing the voltage to 1.4 but still cannot get my memory to run at 3600mhz. Now I set my memory at 3200 16 18 18 36. I don’t know if it would be better to run it at 3400 18 22 22 42. Any advice ?

The main actual takeaway is that mixing will work if you default to the looser speed and timings. Its more beneficial to have identical amounts on each dtick.

Some quite switched-on comments below. One thing, I believe that if you mix different speeds & latencies, all the modules will default to the lowest spec, ie. 2x 2133 + 2x 3600 = 4x 2133, at least with DDR4. It might not even boot if you do that with DDR5, though - not used it, so far. But I've often mixed different capacity modules, at least on DDR4 laptops, either 4GB + 8GB or 8GB + 16GB, and that's never been a problem, you just get 12GB / 24GB, happy days!

bought a laptop recently and was looking at upgrading the ram - the 64GB kit is around £200 in the UK, whereas if I buy two single 32GB sims it works out to around £140!!! Insane and it'll probably be the exact same RAM!

You got lucky, I have a 2 x 8 Corsair Vengeance RGB kit, added the same kit later but I was getting crashes on apps and games constantly and after a memtest run I could confirm that RAM was throwing errors...

I am more lucky that i have upgraded from 16 to 32GB 8x4 sticks mix RAMs 1 kit of crucial ballistix and another kit of GSkilll Ripjaws mix & match both different manufacturers specs everything is same but still working fine.

they must have same ICs (aka Samsung / SK Hynix / Micron etc... even if the timings can be identical, there still may be stability issues BSODs etc... even same timings and speeds different ICS could be unstable even if all 4 sticks are identical eiht same ICs an all sitcks, the daisy chain topology VS t-topology may be better depending on CPU used .... but 4 sticks can put harder load on teh cpus memory controller...

I plan to upgrade my 16GB kit (Kingston Fury 3600MHz CL17 2x8GB) with another two sticks but 2x16GB 3600MHz CL18, will there be a problem with the timing?

CPUz says you only have 1600mhz dram and you say it’s 3200mhz is it ddr?

most motherboard QVL show very few RAM pairs being capable of working as two pair.

thnx for the advice. straight to the point thnx i bought it and no issues at all

I'm building a slightly better version of my buddies rig. He has the vengeance lpx 2x8gb kit c14 but all i can find is the vengeance lpx 2x8gb c16. Is this going to cause problems on a dual channel Intel system?

what about if everything same juct different capacity?

I just did this to Msi Meg Ace x570e with Gskill Trident Neo 3600 8gb. I had 2 for 16gb now added 2 more for 32gb. Both identical kits and same thing happened, got the screen telling me to go into bios. Then everything was the same so saved and booted into Windows and worked perfectly.

doesn't always work.... especially on DDR5. 4x stick has to be slowed down from say 6000MTs /MHz ( iv called it Mhz for 40 years so im sticking with 6000MHz

Great advise. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

I just tried this and it didn't work... Checked and I am supposed to be able to go to 128GB of ram but it's unclear if it's supported for ECC ram... Same exact kits, speeds, timings.... There's just two letters at the end which are different... They work by themselves but not together 😢

I have four of these kits. However they are different versions. Within those versions some are single sides and the others are double sided. and it created a problem for me. Since I mixed them (being all white) and did not expect single sided and double sided in the same exact part number.

I can see in your video, that you where originally running your ram in dual channel. When you installed the extra Ram modules, you now have a "new" stick and an old stick connected in each channel. Do you know of it would be better/more stable to group the "new" sticks on one channel and the old sticks on the other channel?

I have two vengeance 3200mhz 16gb kits with different serial numbers using different timings ones base speed being lower but both running at 3200mhz…..

was hoping to see you mix different ram sizes from the same kit and see if that mattered, i have that exact ram kit but wanna get a 32 gig of two 16 gigs. would that work?