3200 vs 3600 ram?

[Orion_Alathorn]

so I am going to be buying parts in a couple days and I currently have a 32 gig(2x16) 3600 cl18 ram kit sitting in my cart that I chose cause the lower one was only a few bucks cheaper but I noticed when looking at the ram kits today that the 3200 cl16 variant of the kit went on sale or dropped in price or something by about 30 bucks.  now, I am wondering if the kit I have will have a noticeably higher performance difference than the 3200 kit or if I should just go with my gut and buy the slower kit to save some money, would love peoples opinions on this.

[Mateyyy]

3200 CL16 should result in about the same latency as 3600 CL18. Sure, the 3600 kit might do a little better in terms of bandwidth, but it's nothing you'll actually notice in the real world.

Go with the cheaper kit.

[Jayzer]

Because we all like saving money.

[Dennis Tech Tips]

Unless you are doing intense workloads, save your money.

[Orion_Alathorn]

man, you guys are quick for a 1 am post lol, but I am glad that my gut feeling isn't to far off from others.  so I am probably going to switch them then and save myself 40 bucks if they are functionally going to have little difference in the real world.  I'm currently on 16 gigs, so anything is an upgrade in the first place lol

[OCNewbee]

41 minutes ago, Monitorsgeek said:

I’m in the process of building a PC, primarily for gaming, I’m going to be using a i9-9900k motherboard and RTX 3080, I’m confused with the CL on ram (e.g 3200 CL 14 and 3600 CL 16) I was going to buy 3600 as a safe medium but unsure on what CL is appropriate for it!

 

well here is a rough rule of thumb for ram speed. Divide the frequency by the first CL. For example, 3200 CL 14 vs 3600 CL 16 will come out to 228 vs 225. Theoretically, 3200 CL 14 is faster.