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?
Yep, I’ve done it. Currently running a custom NAS build with 2 x 2GB DDR2@800MHz (different manufacturers) + 2 x 1GB DDR2 (different manufacturers as well, one is 667MHz, the other is 800MHz), all of them run on 667MHz.
Just make sure to do a memtest when you plug them in. If it passes, you’re good to go 👍.