5950x memory compatibility?

tryhard techy1169 · August 9, 2021

Budget (including currency): $2900 USD absolute max

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: content creation, video rendering, streaming, gaming, future experimentation (3d modeling, vm's, running game servers, 3d animation)

Other details; pcpartpicker list, https://pcpartpicker.com/user/tryhard_techy1169/saved/#view=MQmMVn

my current system of 8 years is well since due for not only an update, it's a bit late for that but rather a full replacement as I know that the motherboard is half shot and might not last the rest of the year. however for the first time in my life i have the opportunity to not only upgrade to a better pc but a no compromises 16 core 5950x pc. this will be a life changing experience that will allow me to do anything i should want to now or in the future. of course as any tech enthusiast would i have spent the past several days carefully choosing and researching parts for this build. I have all but one part locked in and set on, the one troublesome part is the memory. I have learned more about memory in the past 2 days than i would have ever thought I needed to.

it is my understanding that zen 3 CPU's like 3600mhz memory as a sweet spot so it can easily match up with the fclock. it also likes the lowest cas latency the memory can run and 4 ranks of memory as a sweet spot . that is where the core of the problem unfolds. from what I understand and have seen it is rare that memory manufacturers ever state how many ranks a memory kit has since until first gen ryzen it never mattered and this attitude largely persists to this day. while I do have a 4x16GB kit of memory in the pcpartpicker list I am completely unable to tell if it is single or dual rank. from what little info i have been able to gather it is dual rank which is supposedly a problem, but yet again I can't find any information on how big of a problem that would be. so in short i have everything selected and ready to go except for the ram which seems to lead me to a dead end no matter where I look. so if anyone can suggest a g skill trident z memory kit that is 4x16GB single rank with similar timings to what i have picked under $550 i would be very grateful.

many of you will suggest just dropping down to a known good 32GB kit and call it a day. with this being no compromises and the workloads i intend i already know for a fact that 32GB will not be enough and more importantly not future proof. this system is intended to last me at least 8 years and kick ass it's entire lifetime. I never again want to encounter something i want to do and be limited by a poor hardware choice.

i look forward to your feedback and comments on this build and hopefully this will shed a bit more light on the memory industry and why it is the way it is.

Bombastinator · August 9, 2021

39 minutes ago, tryhard techy1169 said:

Budget (including currency): $2900 USD absolute max

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: content creation, video rendering, streaming, gaming, future experimentation (3d modeling, vm's, running game servers, 3d animation)

Other details; pcpartpicker list, https://pcpartpicker.com/user/tryhard_techy1169/saved/#view=MQmMVn

my current system of 8 years is well since due for not only an update, it's a bit late for that but rather a full replacement as I know that the motherboard is half shot and might not last the rest of the year. however for the first time in my life i have the opportunity to not only upgrade to a better pc but a no compromises 16 core 5950x pc. this will be a life changing experience that will allow me to do anything i should want to now or in the future. of course as any tech enthusiast would i have spent the past several days carefully choosing and researching parts for this build. I have all but one part locked in and set on, the one troublesome part is the memory. I have learned more about memory in the past 2 days than i would have ever thought I needed to.

it is my understanding that zen 3 CPU's like 3600mhz memory as a sweet spot so it can easily match up with the fclock. it also likes the lowest cas latency the memory can run and 4 ranks of memory as a sweet spot . that is where the core of the problem unfolds. from what I understand and have seen it is rare that memory manufacturers ever state how many ranks a memory kit has since until first gen ryzen it never mattered and this attitude largely persists to this day. while I do have a 4x16GB kit of memory in the pcpartpicker list I am completely unable to tell if it is single or dual rank. from what little info i have been able to gather it is dual rank which is supposedly a problem, but yet again I can't find any information on how big of a problem that would be. so in short i have everything selected and ready to go except for the ram which seems to lead me to a dead end no matter where I look. so if anyone can suggest a g skill trident z memory kit that is 4x16GB single rank with similar timings to what i have picked under $550 i would be very grateful.

many of you will suggest just dropping down to a known good 32GB kit and call it a day. with this being no compromises and the workloads i intend i already know for a fact that 32GB will not be enough and more importantly not future proof. this system is intended to last me at least 8 years and kick ass it's entire lifetime. I never again want to encounter something i want to do and be limited by a poor hardware choice.

i look forward to your feedback and comments on this build and hopefully this will shed a bit more light on the memory industry and why it is the way it is.

My understanding is there are 3200 kits that are faster than 3600 kits. There are a lot of different stats that matter for memory, and they can be combined in different ways for different effects. The big thing with ryzen is to not make the cpu infinity fabric force itself into 1:2 to keep up with the memory because this makes everything slower, and not using memory faster than 3600 is one way to do that. You only need as much memory as it takes to keep whatever you are working on in memory, but if your projects are almost always bigger than the memory, more slow memory is better than less faster memory. I would likely go 3200 or even 3000 before going 64gb over 32gb if I could actually use that much space.