Lower latency means faster ram. Latency is usually shown on spec sheets as CAS or CL. This is important. This is the reason you shouldnt mix different ram sticks. Latency is generally represented by a number, for consumer ram its usually between 14 and 19 with 14 being on the higher end and 19 being on the lower end. can you mix 8gb ram sticks with 16gb ram sticks? Yes you can add them without much issue. the only realistic problem would be the faster RAM sticks has to drop down to the timmings and voltage of the slower sticks. even if that happens i would still be getting the gains from adding the additional ram right? or would i get the same performance Yes, one of my PCs has 2 x 2 and 2 x 4 without an issue. They don't even match in voltage or speed, not sure about timings. I wouldn't worry too much. check to make sure the 16GB sticks are not dual rank. If they are, you might run into clock speed issues. 8 GB of RAM: Minimum for Music Production. Moderate VST and Plug-in usage. Producing using loops and samples. Light audio recording, mixing, and mastering. Using computer for music production only. You can accomplish a lot with just 8 GB of RAM. Get 10% Off XSplit VCam with offer code LINUSTECHTIPS at This means that the first 16 GBs will be in the normal fast dual-channel mode, and the last 8 GB will be accessed via single channel. This does decrease memory bandwidth, but if you are in a situation where your system is RAM starved, using the last 8 GBs in single-channel mode will be much faster than accessing virtual memory. Rich S. Mixing RAM With Different Speed and Latency. Technically, you can install memory units with different speed and latency. But whether the system boots is uncertain. All the memory units installed in a motherboard run at the same frequency. If your system already has slower RAM, there is no point in adding faster RAM. Posted January 26, 2016. This will most likely work completely fine, no need at all to worry. PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. 0WRRuV.