Will 16+8 ram work together and in dual channel?

[redcan0]

Hello everyone, I bought 1 16 GB 3200 mhz ram but I didn’t know single channel vs dual channel mattered so much. So now I have to upgrade from single channel to dual channel. I already have 1 16 gb ram stick and thats enough for me but its single channel so I am wondering if I bought the same exact ram stick as the current one but its 8 gb version instead of 16 (all same speeds and latencies and same brand) Would they work together? (I will have 24 gb in total if I do this) and most importantly would it count as dual channel if one is 16 and one is 8 gb? Because the whole point is getting dual channel the cheapest way possible. Thanks.

[Guest]

And the system specs are..........?

 

 

[redcan0]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

And the system specs are..........?

 

 

Ryzen 5 3600

Gigabyte B450M S2H

Asus Strix RTX 2080 Super

Corsair MP510 960Gb

Kingston 16 gb 3200mhz 16cl ram

[badreg]

The first 16GB should run in dual channel, and the remaining 8GB will be single channel.

[Windows7ge]

I'm not a RAM expert but yes they'll likely work together fine and in dual channel but where I become naive is if you fill up 16GB of usable RAM I don't know if the RAM will perform slower as it fills the other 50% of the 1st stick or if Windows will dynamically prefer to use the 16GB stick because of its higher capacity and fill the other at a slower rate to compensate.

 

That I don't know.

[redcan0]

2 minutes ago, badreg said:

The first 16GB should run in dual channel, and the remaining 8GB will be single channel.

So considering I would never fully use 16gb while only gaming I should be fine and its safe to make this purchase right?

[Guest]

They will run together but at what frequency..... You'll have to find out.

 

In most games, dual channel doesnt make a large difference on fps. Most of the render is done on the gpu.

[badreg]

1 minute ago, redcan0 said:

So considering I would never fully use 16gb while only gaming I should be fine and its safe to make this purchase right?

This is an ambitious assumption to make. Even if you never exceed 16GB in usage, it doesn't mean that Windows will always allocate only the dual channel portion.

 

If you run a mixed capability setup, you should expect your performance to be somewhere between single channel and dual channel.

[redcan0]

2 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

They will run together but at what frequency..... You'll have to find out.

 

In most games, dual channel doesnt make a large difference on fps. Most of the render is done on the gpu.

Im concerned because I watched some benchmarks on youtube on dual channel vs single channel and there is like 30 fps difference and also some people said different size rams wouldnt work in dual channel at all so idk.

[Kisai]

22 minutes ago, redcan0 said:

Hello everyone, I bought 1 16 GB 3200 mhz ram but I didn’t know single channel vs dual channel mattered so much. So now I have to upgrade from single channel to dual channel. I already have 1 16 gb ram stick and thats enough for me but its single channel so I am wondering if I bought the same exact ram stick as the current one but its 8 gb version instead of 16 (all same speeds and latencies and same brand) Would they work together? (I will have 24 gb in total if I do this) and most importantly would it count as dual channel if one is 16 and one is 8 gb? Because the whole point is getting dual channel the cheapest way possible. Thanks.

Single vs dual channel. Single ranked (one side) vs dual ranked (chips on both sides), matter.

 

As long as you put them in the right slots and the modules are the same ranks (eg chips on one side or both sides) you can do 8+16+8+16 on a board, but generally this is a bad idea, since that may mix chips with different properties and lower the stability of the PC. Usually the more slots you use, the lower frequency/higher-latency memory you end up having to pick.

 

If you do 8+16+0+0 then this will run in single channel mode but all of it should be visible. If you do 8+0+16+0, then this might run in dual channel mode, but it might also disable the upper 8GB of the 16GB module.

 

It doesn't hurt to try, but make sure you check using cpu-z what it's actually running as.

[redcan0]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Single vs dual channel. Single ranked (one side) vs dual ranked (chips on both sides), matter.

 

As long as you put them in the right slots and the modules are the same ranks (eg chips on one side or both sides) you can do 8+16+8+16 on a board, but generally this is a bad idea, since that may mix chips with different properties and lower the stability of the PC. Usually the more slots you use, the lower frequency/higher-latency memory you end up having to pick.

 

If you do 8+16+0+0 then this will run in single channel mode but all of it should be visible. If you do 8+0+16+0, then this might run in dual channel mode, but it might also disable the upper 8GB of the 16GB module.

 

It doesn't hurt to try, but make sure you check using cpu-z what it's actually running as.

I only have 2 ram slots on my mobo so I will do 16+8+0+0 So no dual channel for me with different ram sticks to conclude this right?

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, redcan0 said:

I only have 2 ram slots on my mobo so I will do 16+8+0+0 So no dual channel for me with different ram sticks to conclude this right?

That's what I'd assume then yes. Machines with only two slots tend to have them arranged already for dual channel. The reason it's not recommended to mix different sizes is because you can't really predict how it affects the chip timings, even swapping the modules can have a different effect on stability.