Confused about gear 1/gear 2, what memory kit should I buy?

[Aereldor]

So while considering going up to DDR5 for my build, I've been hearing a lot about Gear 1, Gear 2, why some RAM kits will work and some won't. It seems like a lot, and I'd rather just have someone tell me what 2x16GB kit to buy. 

 

Here's the rest of my build. 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor  ($153.66 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z690M-ITX/ax Mini ITX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($134.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($124.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16 GB Video Card  ($799.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: Fractal Design Ridge PCIe 4.0 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($125.79 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS SGX (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply  ($109.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1449.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-04-16 22:15 EDT-0400

[RONOTHAN##]

If you're going DDR5, don't worry about Gear 1 or Gear 2, you will always be in Gear 2. If you're going DDR4, then you need to worry about it, though generally with DDR4 you want to be in Gear 1 if possible. 

 

So for the actual Gear debate, Gear 1 has better latency while Gear 2 allows for higher clocks, and at a certain point you can make up for that latency disadvantage of Gear 2 so it has overall better performance. On DDR4, Gear 1 tops out at roughly 4000MT/s depending on the chip, and in order to make up for that in Gear 2 you need over 5000MT/s, at which point you end up with weird stability issues if you can even get that high clocked in the first place, so Gear 1 is generally better. On DDR5, Gear 1 doesn't exist, so you're permanently stuck in Gear 2, but you're also at high enough clock speeds where it's usually faster that DDR4 in Gear 1 anyway, given you have decent timings. 

 

Assuming you're going DDR5, get one of these kits:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KqW3GP

 

If you're going DDR4, get the 3200 CL16 or 3600 CL18 kit you can find as spending any more than necessary on DDR4 doesn't make too much sense nowadays IMO. 

[Aereldor]

40 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

If you're going DDR5, don't worry about Gear 1 or Gear 2, you will always be in Gear 2. If you're going DDR4, then you need to worry about it, though generally with DDR4 you want to be in Gear 1 if possible. 

 

So for the actual Gear debate, Gear 1 has better latency while Gear 2 allows for higher clocks, and at a certain point you can make up for that latency disadvantage of Gear 2 so it has overall better performance. On DDR4, Gear 1 tops out at roughly 4000MT/s depending on the chip, and in order to make up for that in Gear 2 you need over 5000MT/s, at which point you end up with weird stability issues if you can even get that high clocked in the first place, so Gear 1 is generally better. On DDR5, Gear 1 doesn't exist, so you're permanently stuck in Gear 2, but you're also at high enough clock speeds where it's usually faster that DDR4 in Gear 1 anyway, given you have decent timings. 

 

Assuming you're going DDR5, get one of these kits:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KqW3GP

 

If you're going DDR4, get the 3200 CL16 or 3600 CL18 kit you can find as spending any more than necessary on DDR4 doesn't make too much sense nowadays IMO. 

I'm going DDR4 because it's literally $60 more on a motherboard otherwise, and also a lot more on RAM. 

 

I'm probably going to go with the micro center bundle of the 12600kf, an MSI Z790 board, and 16GB of DDR4 for $250, trying to find a small case to cram it into. The RAM kit they have is 2x8gb 3200mhz fwiw.