Can you choose any crystal for a PIC Microcontroller?

You can use any crystal so long as it is within the frequency range that the PIC crystal driver is specified for.

The crystal driver of most PICs (I didn't look up your PIC specifically, that's your job) can be set to three different drive levels, usually called LP (low power), XT (crystal), and HS (high speed). The slower ones use less power but also have a lower maximum crystal frequency they can support. HS mode might overdrive and damage sensitive low frequency 32768 Hz crystals, like are used in wrist watches. Together the three crystal drive levels cover the range from a few 10s of kHz to 20 MHz, which is the fastest that PIC can be driven at anyway.

Another point is that you want to use a crystal specified for parallel resonance application. That means its frequency is specified for the way the PIC crystal driver will drive the crystal. These crystals will be specified with a load capacitance. Series resonant crystals will work, but the frequency probably won't be within tolerance.


Assuming you don't exceed the clockrate spec in the silicon, programmed fuses, and application code, you can use any crystal you like. The datasheets will explain which capacitors to use.