RAM is one of the most basic hardware components for a PC to work, and around it there are many “urban legends” and “myths” that are nothing more than false ideas of people who do not know how it works. In this article we are going to talk about some of these myths about RAM and, of course, to disassemble what are completely false .
The role of RAM in a PC is to store calculations made by the processor, so that it can access them when you need them immediately instead of having to perform the calculations again. However, there are many “urban legends” and “myths” about RAM that are nothing but misconceptions from people who do not understand how it works, and therefore in this article we will try to clarify everything.
Can different capacities and speeds of RAM be mixed?
Generally, both laptops and desktop PCs come with a minimum of two sockets of RAM, and one of the concepts that many “experts” will tell you is that you should not mix different capacities and / or memory speeds because it brings problems.
The reality is quite different. Can you mix different RAM capacities? Yes, without problem. And speeds? Also, although it is not the most optimal to have the best performance, but generally you will not have problems because simply all the RAM will work at the speed of the slowest module .
For example, you have a module that works at 2400 MHz and you want to add one more to double the amount of RAM you have, but this new one works at 3000 MHz. You will not have a problem doing it, only that both modules will work at 2400 Mhz. If you wanted both to run at 3000 MHz you would have to manually overclock the BIOS, and then you might have stability issues.
Regarding the different capacity of the RAM modules there is absolutely no problem as long as the motherboard supports those capacities. For example, if you have a 4 GB module and add another 8 GB (12 GB in total), for the PC it will be as if you had 4 + 4 GB running in dual channel and another 4 GB running in single channel.
Again, it is not optimal to have the best performance , but from there you can not do it or you will have problems there is a world away.
Do you need more RAM?
“This amount of RAM is more than enough for the programs you use and you don’t need more” or “With 8 GB you have enough and having more is a waste” are repetitive phrases that we hear frequently. Yes, you can have enough RAM for the programs you use, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work better if you had more RAM.
Having more RAM always helps , and this is because of how programs and games are made. Most developers write their software in such a way that it asks the operating system for a certain percentage of the available RAM and not a specific amount, so the more RAM you have installed, the higher that percentage will be and the greater number of instructions will have direct access to the processor, so it will work better and faster .
Just because you are normally using only 60% of your RAM does not mean that you do not need more, or rather, that you could not have better performance if you had more RAM.
Because of how RAM memory management works in Windows, for example, a certain amount is reserved for open programs even if it is not used, but when the limit is reached, it begins to “remove” RAM from programs and reduces their performance in order to provide service to the new programs that we are opening. If there is more RAM available, this limit is further away, with the obvious benefits that this implies.
No, RAM capacity is not everything
Surely you are clear how much RAM your PC has or, rather, how much capacity you have. And many people think that simply having, for example, 32 GB of RAM on their computer will work better than someone else’s who only has 8 GB, but the reality is that this is not always the case.
And it is not always so because the performance of RAM memory is not determined by its capacity, but by its speed and latency. It may be that with more RAM you have a greater capacity to have more open programs as we explained in the previous point, but they will not necessarily run faster.
In other words, if for example someone has 32 GB but that works at 2400 Mhz it is not going to have better performance than someone who has only 8 GB but that works at 4000 Mhz. So in summary, no, capacity is not what matters most, or at least it is not “only” what matters.
Should you empty the RAM for better performance?
This is one of the most frustrating and persistent myths about how RAM works on a PC, and it is a legacy of smartphones. Smartphones manage memory in a very different way than a PC does, they are much less efficient and, above all, effective, and in many of these – especially Android – it is necessary to “empty or clean the RAM” when the performance degrades.
On PC it is just the opposite. That the RAM is full (without reaching its limit, yes) means that there are many instructions that the processor can immediately draw on without having to recalculate them, so that the performance will be much higher and save the CPU work , delivering better performance.
Remember that RAM is not the same as a hard disk, it is not used to store things but it is temporary storage at the service of the processor. If you have 8 GB of RAM, you are constantly reading and writing data to them, and since it is data that you do not want to save for posterity – unlike on a hard drive – it is precisely how it should work.
Therefore, do not pay attention to those programs that promise to optimize the RAM memory or empty it. On PC that not only does not work but is counterproductive. Don’t do it, really. Having free space on the hard disk is good, in RAM it is not.