different RAM

[Furyline]

I have a 3 year old PC and bought another stick of ram to extend its life a little. I was careless and basically bought the cheapest stuff I could find and crossed my fingers. Of course now the old and new ram will not work at the same time. Now that I looked it up, I see that the old ram has different cas latency and voltage than the new stuff.

Basically I'm wondering if there is something I can adjust to make the ram work together, or if I should just return the new stuff and get what I really need. If it matters, this is DDR400.

As a preemptive followup, should I be buying the exact same model of ram, or is it enough to just match the specs? Thanks

 

[Nathelion]

Matching the specs should be enough. Also, you might be able to make it work by upping the voltage on one of the sticks and relaxing the timings etc... it depends on what your mobo BIOS is capable of.

 

[Furyline]

Thanks for the idea, I messed around with some bios settings, unfortunately it could not get started. Looks like I will be carefully selecting a new stick of ram.