# 2.6V vs. 2.5V ram



## LightningDemon (Aug 3, 2005)

Hello all,

I bought a new board. It supports 2.5V DDR ram. My old board supported 2.6V DDR ram. I have two Kingston 512MB pc3200 (dual channel) sticks @ 2.6V. Will puttin these in my new board hurt anything or disrupt performance?


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2005)

LightningDemon said:


> I bought a new board. *It supports 2.5V DDR ram*.


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## LightningDemon (Aug 3, 2005)

A tech in a local shop said that the RAM would be fine operating at a lower voltage. I personally have no clue about that, which is why I was posting. To me, it seems logical that You can downgrade voltage...I know I probably will not get the max. performance out of my RAM, but with that minut difference, I seriously doubt I'd see any decrease in performance.


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## Hellgy (Jul 22, 2005)

well, it will run fine, maby less stable, the performance would be hurt for sure.


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## twajetmech (Jul 1, 2004)

All it means is that the mobo can deliver 2.5 volts to memory that require or can operate at such a low voltage, there should be provisions in the bios to raise the memory voltage to 2.6, probably all the way to 2.8 While running the memory at a lower voltage may do no harm, it may very well affect stability and/or your performance. You should read your mobo manual and find out how to adjust the memory voltage to 2.6 volts so as not to have any issues.
As a note, the 2.6 volts referenced by Kingston is just that, it should operate as advertised and at its rated timings at 2.6 volts, but, that depends on the accuracy of the voltage supplied to the memory by the mobo, in most cases mobo's do not supply exactly 2.6 volts, it will fluctuate. That said, it is thus not uncommon to have to bump the memory voltage to 2.65 or even 2.75 volts in order to gain stability, this bump in voltage will in no way cause pre-mature failure of your memory, and such a bump in memory is common when using more than one memory module, (such as running 4 X 512) or large modules (512+ each) Voltage fluctuations can depend on several factors....the quality and rating of your power supply, the quality of the vrm on you mobo and how loaded your psu is...ie is it running on the edge or does it have any headroom, and of course ultimately the power you have available...ie rual areas tend to have frequent brownouts and or surges, which if you dont have a surge surpressor and/or UPS and a power supply that can handle the spikes and dips can also affect computer performance and longevity.


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