One DIMM per channel ok for gaming?

[Hexxagone]

Asus Maximus Z690 Apex has 2 slots, one dimm per channel is what I was told. Ram is sold in pairs and usually is 2 dimms per channel. So is this board ok for gaming or should I look at different options?

 

[Spotty]

The Z690 Apex is meant for extreme overclocking, the two DIMM slots are supposed to allow for higher memory overclocks.

It wouldn't matter for gaming other than not having the ability to drop in extra memory later on if you wanted to upgrade but buying a $700+ overclocking motherboard is a bit of a waste.

[GuiltySpark_]

That board is perfectly fine from a RAM perspective, each slot is it’s own channel so it’s setup like normal for dual channel operation. 
 

However, that’s a $720 board designed for extreme overclocking and absurdly overkill for any gaming system. Hell there is only two RAM slots because less DIMMs is easier to keep stable in serious overclocking scenarios. 

[Hexxagone]

Yeah I have gone on a journey with these boards, first I had the Z690-E, then I learned that its wired for PCIe 5.0 SSDs even though they dont exist, so using my Samsung 980 Pro would lower the PCIe lane of the GPU to x8. I dont need watercooling motherboards or white ones so that left me with the Z690 Hero which was sold out (and I dont like the way it looks) the Apex was $120 more than the Hero so I bought it as it was still available. 

 

Now I'm thinking of going to the Hero if this board is not the most ideal for just 4K gaming. For example, isn't the XMP profiles on DDR5 ram meant for dual channel memory as its sold in pairs? If the Apex is single channel per DIMM, would those XMP profiles work with this board?

[GuiltySpark_]

Again, the board in question does dual channel memory just fine, hence the two slots. 

[GuiltySpark_]

That all being said, as DDR5 offers zero benefit for gaming (or in some cases, worse performance) why not a DDR4 board? DDR5 icurrently is hard to find, expensive and offered with extremely high latency. 

[Hexxagone]

18 minutes ago, rickeo said:

That all being said, as DDR5 offers zero benefit for gaming (or in some cases, worse performance) why not a DDR4 board? DDR5 icurrently is hard to find, expensive and offered with extremely high latency. 

Decided to build a future proof system which I will keep for a few years, got a 12900k and want to game at 4K so I decided to go with DDR5 as higher end DDR4 is still spendy

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, Hexxagone said:

Decided to build a future proof system which I will keep for a few years, got a 12900k and want to game at 4K so I decided to go with DDR5 as higher end DDR4 is still spendy

There's no such thing as future proofing. By the time faster DDR5 comes around, you'll probably need a newer CPU (with a better memory controller) to take advantage, which will most likely also require a new board.

 

41 minutes ago, Hexxagone said:

For example, isn't the XMP profiles on DDR5 ram meant for dual channel memory as its sold in pairs? If the Apex is single channel per DIMM, would those XMP profiles work with this board?

Two DIMM slots, with a channel for each slot, is dual channel. If you have four slots you typically have one channel per two slots, so it's also dual channel, just with more possible capacity (there is also quad channel, but that is typically only for server boards and CPUs)