Ram upgrade question

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marklcfc

Gold Level Poster
If I have 2 x 8gb sticks, can I just replace them with 2 x 16gb sticks or the same brand/speed etc and it will continue to work or do I need to make system changes?
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
It's only when you're adding to what's already there that you have to be careful about matching the old & new pairs of sticks.

As long as you're not intending to mix the 2 pairs of RAM sticks, then there's usually no problem in just replacing with a bigger pair.
 
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marklcfc

Gold Level Poster
Ok thanks also whats the difference between C16 and C18 Corsair Vengeance 3600 ram? I currently have C18.
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Is the timings/latency. The lower the number the shorter the wait time for each request from the RAM (16 clock cycles vs 18 clock cycles).

It's in this way that you'll sometimes see us saying that C16 3200MHz is as quick as C18 3600MHz.

It's calculated by dividing the CAS by the half the frequency (as it's DDR - double-data-rate RAM) and multiplying the result by 1000 to get the nanosecond latency:
  • 3200 C16 = 16/1600 = 0.01 x 1000 = 10ns
  • 3600 C18 = 18/1800 = 0.01 x 1000 = 10ns
  • 3600 C16 = 16/1800 = 0.0089 x 1000 = 8.9ns
 
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marklcfc

Gold Level Poster
I'm wondering whether I should increase from 16gb to 32gb. In normal browsing situations like now I am at 30% memory usage. If I start a game up it's pushing 50% straight away. I don't play many games but when I do it is occasionally Cities Skylines which is quite resource intensive.
 
Martinr36

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
With RAM the system will only use as much as it needs, if it's using 8 GB out of the 16, it will just use 8 of the 32 if you increase to 32, now if you were getting close to using all of the 16 then yes maybe
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
marklcfc said:
I'm wondering whether I should increase from 16gb to 32gb. In normal browsing situations like now I am at 30% memory usage. If I start a game up it's pushing 50% straight away. I don't play many games but when I do it is occasionally Cities Skylines which is quite resource intensive.
Click to expand...
Unless you insist on having hundreds of Chrome tabs open at the same time as running a heavily-modded game (or MSFS), then 32Gb would probably be overkill.
 
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