I know the answer to my question is almost always yes because it can't really hurt, but I just want to make sure. I have a desktop computer that has 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and a 12th gen i5. I have 2 sticks of 4 GB DDR3-1866 laying around and I still have slots 1 & 3 open on my motherboard for RAM. Should I add these, or would it not be worth it since it is just DDR3? Also if I do add it, what order should the RAM be in?
Solved Should I add more RAM to my system?
- Thread starter WyFishy
- Start date
I don't feel like it would but it can't make my system worse and I had some lying around anyways. But if I can't add DDR3 to my system then I will definitely manage without it. Even my music production software which is probably the most intensive thing I do next to gaming doesn't even use 16 GB so I definitely have enough.
In this situation it would be very worse. Considering a theoretical situation where you -could- add that RAM to your system then the effective frequency would drop from 3200 to 1866, nearly halving performance for a 25% gain in capacity that you aren't even using to begin with.
Unless you're using 85%+ or so in utilization, more RAM won't really make a difference. Having 'more' doesn't make your PC automatically run faster (you simply cache more objects from storage), you just lose less performance in swap situations when you would have otherwise started running out of free RAM.