Choosing the correct ram

WestTexan · July 14, 2019

Hi, I'm building a Ryzen 5 3400g and I need some help choosing ram

I was originally planning on having 2×4gb ddr4 3200mhz ram, but I have decided to buy more ram.

Would you suggest I buy another 2×4gb 3200mhz ram or should I buy 2×8gb 3200mhz ram?

I havent bought my motherboard yet but I plan on buying a B450 motherboard that has 4 ram slots

Trevor87 · July 14, 2019

Go with 16 GB of ram it save you form replacing it later.

If your running programs that you need in the back round that you need it help.

kaldarash · July 14, 2019

Since your CPU is dual channel, I recommend 2x8GB. 16GB is the right amount as Trevor said, but to be clear, you should just about always use the fewest sticks to meet your requirement as possible while still maintaining the correct number of sticks to match your channels. So dual channel = 2 minimum, and 2x8gb is a very reasonable setup so that's the best choice.

The reason it's a better choice is because increasing the number of sticks increases the load on the memory controller and things tend to become less stable. It can be very difficult to reach the stated frequency and timings on the RAM kit you buy if you buy more than one of it. Additionally, every speed and timing aspect of RAM must run at the slowest speed of any part, so adding more has a 0% chance of increasing speed, but a good chance of decreasing it.