4 Matched Sticks vs buying 2 pair? RAM

[itakey]

I'm looking to buy 32GB of RAM in 8GB sticks. Price is cheaper if bought in the pair vs a set of 4 all at once. I've always read its best to get a matched batch of RAM versus mixing pairs. Any truth to this? Better to spend little extra and get all 4 in 1 matched pack, or is it common to just get 2 pairs and combine them?

 

[Magic Carpet]

There is truth in this. I had a pair of 16gb kits of Crucial Ballistix (32gb total) that didn't perform as well as those kits separately. Eventually, I had to loosen timings a bit. Of course, I am talking about running them slightly out of spec. At stock, I had zero problems.