I have a NAS with a 3rd gen i7 and 8 GB (2x 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz) of non-ECC RAM which has a RAID 5 mdadm array. I don’t have any memory issues but I could as I add more services. I have two other 4 GB sticks 1333 MHz DDR3 which I have no other use for. I don’t care about the minor speed decrease. I know mixing is generally a bad idea.
But, all of the posts I’ve seen about this are in regard to playing games or in production environments with server-grade hardware (ECC RAM, maybe hardware RAID). Not in a consumer hardware-focused homelab-type environment
What do you all think? Has anyone else done something similar? Am I asking for trouble here?
Should be fine. All the memory will just need to run at the speed of the slower kit. Make sure you put the sticks in the correct channels for dual channel support. But yeah, maybe only do so when you actually need the memory.
Not a professional in this field by any means, so other people with more knowledge could have a better or (right) answer.
I’ve turned my old gaming system with non-ecc RAM into Proxmox server that’s running a Minecraft server, NAS, pi-hole and a couple other things. It originally had 16gb of RAM, and I bumped it up to 32gb with sticks running similar speeds. I think that’s the biggest thing here. You will likely be fine running mixed speeds, but just know that your system will be as fast as the slowest component. Even though you have sticks at higher speeds, you’ll be limited to the lower speeds. Since you don’t care about speeds that much, I’d say you’re fine. I could be wrong though, so hopefully someone else with more knowledge will chime in.
Mixing RAM is OK. I’ve been running consumer PCs with mixed memory for years.
Better not put different sticks on the same channel, though. Depending on your MB you may need to set frequency manually to 1333, but most likely it will work without that.
If I put them in I’ll check the bios to make sure everything looks good before using. Thanks!
