Ram what to prioritize?

[Joshua Gillis]

I have a choice, between buying two sticks of 3600MHZ Ram, C18, or 4 sticks of 3600MHZ Ram, C17. Both options are for 32Gb.

 

I understand that according to accepted wisdom, two sticks is slightly better than 4 for the same capacity, particular if you are planning on using Ryzen, which I am.

 

So my question is, is it better to have fewer sticks at the higher latency, or more sticks with the lower latency? (I realize I probably won't be able to tell the difference at the end of the day, but the question is bugging me)

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, Joshua Gillis said:

, two sticks is slightly better than 4 for the same capacity,

That is, if you can guarantee dual rank sticks for the 2 stick kit. Otherwise this happens

 

[Bigman397]

This is highly dependent on the motherboard. Some motherboards do not get along well with certain types of ram at more than 1 stick per channel. In practice I would take the 2 sticks of 16gb and hope you get a good kit that you can run at CL16. Overclocking 2 sticks is much easier than 4.

[pythonmegapixel]

If it's something that you anticipate will make no difference, why not just buy whichever is cheaper?

[FloRolf]

I'd go 2x16 over 4x8 any day. CL17 is better but not noticable in any way. 

You can probably ge the CL18 kit down to cl17 as well. 

[Bigman397]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

That is, if you can guarantee dual rank sticks for the 2 stick kit. Otherwise this happens

 

If you are using 16gb sticks they are going to be dual rank out of hte gate (usually) - look to gskill ripjawsV - these are B die dual rank sticks that clock well

[8tg]

The differences in these types of situations are incredibly small on the performance front and really only show their differences when we’re talking like hours of ram heavy application usage resulting in tiny changes in slower load times. Things like machine thermal simulations for example are the only thing I’ve ever done that use tons of ram to hold obscene amounts of data on individual spot temperature and material changes and that’s also the only time I’ve ever seen a difference of 400mhz actually affect the time it takes, about 3 minutes longer on a 2 hour test with 2666mhz ram versus 3000mhz.

Unless you’re doing things like that you don’t need to be concerned with those small differences. I would get the 2 sticks leaving potential room for upgrades if you need 64gb in the future, but if you don’t need that 64 or intend to replace the system before that point you would potentially need that much ram, then just get the 4 sticks because it’ll look nicer tbh.

The 4 sticks would be slightly faster though, that whole multi stick issue with Ryzen is a case of being kinda over exaggerated in how much it actually matters.

Yes the memory controller isn’t a big fan of 4 sticks versus 2 but you’re talking sub 5ns latency changes like that, which is also close to the latency increase with just having the sticks further away from the cpu anyway...

[Jurrunio]

21 minutes ago, Bigman397 said:

If you are using 16gb sticks they are going to be dual rank out of hte gate (usually) - look to gskill ripjawsV - these are B die dual rank sticks that clock well

Outdated information. There are so many 16Gb DDR4 modules now that 16GB single rank sticks are the overwhelming majority outside of settings only Samsung B-die could achieve. 3600MHz CL18 wont be B-die only, CL17 is also unlikely. You need to get to 16-16-16-36 (not even 16-19-19-39, despite also being "CL16")