Upgrading RAM Question

[Adajer]

If you have 2 sticks of dual channel ram for 4G and you wanted to upgrade to 8G. Do you have to by a whole new set of RAM, 2Gx4? or can you just buy 2 more sticks and add them?

[sruon]

Buying the very same sticks is probably the best option... but technically you can add anything and it will work. (just don't use lower frequency ones)

[Rowe]

well, that's a trick question. It depends on your Mother board. Do you have enough RAM slots to add more?

Some motherboards particularly ones from big name vendors such as Dell HP often come with just two slots.

When adding RAM if you have available slots add in matching pairs.

[Cheerios]

RAM with lower speeds will work, but your current ram will also operate at the lowest frequency installed.

Adding on to the motherboard thing, try to research to see what kind of issues may arise with additional RAM being added. There are some motherboards that don't function with 4x 1 GB sticks, but they function with 2x2 GB, and some that don't support 4x2 GB but support 3x2 GB. So before you go ahead and get 8 GB of ram, make sure your motherboard won't shit the bed and only recognize 6 GB.

To answer the original question plainly: yeah, you can just throw in 2 more sticks instead of buying a whole new set. The voltage settings will matter more than the RAM speed, since you can't set all 4 to have unique voltages.