ram RAM Slots

[Benny-fields]

I currently have 2 8GB 3000mHz sick in my board and I'm looking to upgrade. Would I see any benefit from adding two of the same sticks over replacing them with 2 16GB sticks (excluding price differences and specific brands/models of RAM sticks. I mainly want to learn more about the whole 4 slots, 2 channels, gotta put the sticks in the right slots, etc).

 

I think it's obvious by now, but I'm fairly new to the PC building space. 

 

 

Thank you! 

[Downkey]

7 minutes ago, Benny-fields said:

I currently have 2 8GB 3000mHz sick in my board and I'm looking to upgrade. Would I see any benefit from adding two of the same sticks over replacing them with 2 16GB sticks (excluding price differences and specific brands/models of RAM sticks. I mainly want to learn more about the whole 4 slots, 2 channels, gotta put the sticks in the right slots, etc).

 

I think it's obvious by now, but I'm fairly new to the PC building space. 

 

 

Thank you! 

What CPU do you have? Are you only gaming or are you doing multithreaded applications?

[camieabz]

If you check the RAM support section of your motherboard model (i.e. mobo brand webpage), you'll see that while 'x' speed is supported with 2 sticks, it might not be with 4 sticks. It'll all be 2 channel for the most part, but my own practice is to use two sticks where possible, and avoid 4-stick issues.

[Benny-fields]

5 minutes ago, Downkey said:

What CPU do you have? Are you only gaming or are you doing multithreaded applications?

Ryzen 3700x. I mostly use it for video editing (Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop). I don't game much. 

[Benny-fields]

6 minutes ago, camieabz said:

If you check the RAM support section of your motherboard model (i.e. mobo brand webpage), you'll see that while 'x' speed is supported with 2 sticks, it might not be with 4 sticks. It'll all be 2 channel for the most part, but my own practice is to use two sticks where possible, and avoid 4-stick issues.

Interesting. I would've assumed 4 sticks would be better because I thought it would spread the workload more, but that makes sense. 

 

Thank you. 

[camieabz]

With some setups, four sticks can yield some extra performance, but it would be dependent on you having four sticks that are happy to work with each other (i.e. a 4-stick kit).

 

Have a watch of this for a better understanding of the possibilities (and potential issues) - 

 

(Assuming you can keep up with Steve's talking speed )

 

Bear in mind that these guys really know how to manually tune RAM, and can afford to mess about with it.

[SpeakTruthToPower]

1 hour ago, Benny-fields said:

Interesting. I would've assumed 4 sticks would be better because I thought it would spread the workload more, but that makes sense. 

 

Thank you. 

On a dual channel system (Intel and AMD consumer platforms) you'll often have 4 slots (left to right A1, B1, A2, B2). Electrically, A1 + B1 as well as A2 + B2 are tied together. So they are using the same electrical bus back and forth to the CPU. On a four channel board, all four would have their own channel back to the CPU. 

 

Because these are tied together, it's critical they exactly match in terms of clock speed and timings, otherwise they will not work correctly. Your CPU and memory need to be timed precisely together otherwise they cannot properly pass data back and forth, like a rock band, everyone needs to be on the same rhythm. 

 

As well if you are pushing your ram to the very edge of what it is capable of (ie you have xmp overclocks, running your 3600 Mhz certified ram at the  full clockspeed) you are already pushing the memory bus to the edge of stability. Adding more ram sticks will demand more voltages from the board and more complex signalling from the CPU. If things fall out of time, you will have memory stability problems.

 

So in the end, if you do use four sticks on a dual channel board, you may not get as good performance out of those sticks as you did with same quantity in two sticks. 

 

As an addendum to this though, there is a benefit of having two ranks of memory modules per channel. 16 GB sticks already have two ranks on the dimm, while 8 GB sticks normally only have one. So if you have 4x8 GB sticks it can be a bit faster than 2x8 GB sticks, but 16 GB sticks already have that dual rank benefit.