upgrading ram but going down from 4 sticks to 2 on a quad channel mobo instead of going up to 8 sticks.

[kofman13]

I have an MSI X99S Gaming 7 and an i7 5820K

The mobo has 8 ram slots, currently i have 16gb/4x4GB. i want to go to 32GB (maybe 64 gb one day if need be for after effects). 

Option 1: get 4 more of the same sticks to bring me up to 32GB, but ill be using 8 sticks, is that or better or worse than 4 sticks?  i also wont have slots to go higher than 32 GB then one day so this is cheaper short term but more expensive long term.

Option 2: get a 2x16GB kit. saves slots for another set one day to bring me to 64GB. BUT i would be using 2 sticks instead of 4.

 

Basically, is running 8 sticks worse than 4? would 4 sticks 32GB be different than 2 sticks 32 GB?

[S.Hamed23]

2x16GB >> 4x8GB

5 minutes ago, kofman13 said:

I have an MSI X99S Gaming 7 and an i7 5820K

The mobo has 8 ram slots, currently i have 16gb/4x4GB. i want to go to 32GB (maybe 64 gb one day if need be for after effects). 

Option 1: get 4 more of the same sticks to bring me up to 32GB, but ill be using 8 sticks, is that or better or worse than 4 sticks?  i also wont have slots to go higher than 32 GB then one day so this is cheaper short term but more expensive long term.

Option 2: get a 2x16GB kit. saves slots for another set one day to bring me to 64GB. BUT i would be using 2 sticks instead of 4.

 

Basically, is running 8 sticks worse than 4? would 4 sticks 32GB be different than 2 sticks 32 GB?

 

[Freakwise]

6 minutes ago, kofman13 said:

I have an MSI X99S Gaming 7 and an i7 5820K

The mobo has 8 ram slots, currently i have 16gb/4x4GB. i want to go to 32GB (maybe 64 gb one day if need be for after effects). 

Option 1: get 4 more of the same sticks to bring me up to 32GB, but ill be using 8 sticks, is that or better or worse than 4 sticks?  i also wont have slots to go higher than 32 GB then one day so this is cheaper short term but more expensive long term.

Option 2: get a 2x16GB kit. saves slots for another set one day to bring me to 64GB. BUT i would be using 2 sticks instead of 4.

 

Basically, is running 8 sticks worse than 4? would 4 sticks 32GB be different than 2 sticks 32 GB?

If you care about future upgradability then go with option 2...

Also check the motherboard manual for the best slot to put the ram in

[kofman13]

2 minutes ago, S.Hamed23 said:

2x16GB >> 4x8GB

 

is less sticks better always? why, but i agree that if i do 2x16, its easier to upgrade to 64gb total later one day IF i need

[PAPO1990]

4 minutes ago, S.Hamed23 said:

2x16GB >> 4x8GB

 

not on a quad channel platform

[S.Hamed23]

12 minutes ago, kofman13 said:

is less sticks better always? why, but i agree that if i do 2x16, its easier to upgrade to 64gb total later one day IF i need

Yupp. The trick is always go for the half of the channels allotted by the mobo. It gives you better speed 

[kofman13]

1 minute ago, S.Hamed23 said:

Yupp. The trick is always go for the half of the channels allotted by the mobo. It gives you better speed 

so ur saying if i have quad i should go 2 sticks? or you mean half the slots? i have 8 slots so 4 sticks? whats the point of quad channel board if fastest is 2 sticks?

[PAPO1990]

I get the feeling that S.Hamed is confusing quad channel with quad slot. Most MoBos have 2 slots for each channel, for memory SPEED it's generally best to only use a single slot from each channel.

 

I'm also on X99 and when I first built my PC I only had 2 sticks of RAM (for cost reasons) when I finally upgraded to 4 sticks there was a small but noticeable performance improvement in most benchmarks before even activating XMP as my newer RAM was also faster.

[S.Hamed23]

6 hours ago, PAPO1990 said:

I get the feeling that S.Hamed is confusing quad channel with quad slot. Most MoBos have 2 slots for each channel, for memory SPEED it's generally best to only use a single slot from each channel.

 

I'm also on X99 and when I first built my PC I only had 2 sticks of RAM (for cost reasons) when I finally upgraded to 4 sticks there was a small but noticeable performance improvement in most benchmarks before even activating XMP as my newer RAM was also faster.

My bad, man.

[PAPO1990]

1 hour ago, S.Hamed23 said:

My bad, man.

No worries, ever since the advent of Ryzen quad channel platforms have started fading into obscurity, honestly if I hadn't spent so much time on a triple channel platform (my previous PC on X58), and now on a quad channel one I'd probably have forgotten about them myself as well