RAM - 2 or 4 sticks

[Will Ozellman]

So i just noticed that when LTT use 16 gb of ram they often have 4 sticks installed. I'm building my first pc and i went with 2 sticks, 8 gb each. Does this even matter?

[LiamApex]

no 2x8 would be better because then you could upgrade to 4x8 (if u wanted to)

[404-USER-NOT-FOUND-ERROR]

2x4 gig is enough

[RuLeZ]

4 just make sense if you are using a chipset that support 4 channels.

[ineedhelppleasehelp]

doesn't matter but you have space for more sticks if you use 2x8

[Guest]

So i just noticed that when LTT use 16 gb of ram they often have 4 sticks installed. I'm building my first pc and i went with 2 sticks, 8 gb each. Does this even matter?

Not really, it really depends if you want to buy a single stick now, or if you want to run it in dual/quad channel 

[RuLeZ]

2x4 gig is enough

Depends what do you do, and RAM is so cheap these days.

[404-USER-NOT-FOUND-ERROR]

Depends what do you do, and RAM is so cheap these days.

I mean for gaming

[Will Ozellman]

Not really, it really depends if you want to buy a single stick now, or if you want to run it in dual/quad channel 

I don't really know what difference it makes to run it in dual or quad

[baracken]

What is best, quad or dual channel?

[RuLeZ]

I don't really know what difference it makes to run it in dual or quad

Rightnow just the X99 support it.

[GlassBomb]

It's always suggested to use fewer sticks, with higher capacity. As it least then you are able to increase the capacity if you ever had to.

 

So 2x8GB > 4x4GB

[RuLeZ]

What is best, quad or dual channel?

Doesnt change much, quad channel is more like a super premium that would just make sense with a nice iGPU, but since the premium CPU dont use the iGPU (or have), doenst make much diference in the real world.

[xTrekStorex]

get one kit on dualchannel. it's faster, can run on more systems and has headroom for upgrades. also with less channels used you can run higher clockspeeds since the memorycontroller has more headroom. but dont think now that less channels is always better. you should at least get dualchannel since the modules will split the load like GPUs in SLI. so dualchannel theoretically gives 2x the speed or rather 0.5x the latency of a single module.

[Guest]

I don't really know what difference it makes to run it in dual or quad

neither do i

the options there

just get it in the highest capacity you can m8 it'll make your life so much easier 

[othertomperson]

Doesnt change much, quad channel is more like a super premium that would just make sense with a nice iGPU, but since the premium CPU dont use the iGPU (or have), doenst make much diference in the real world.

 

Suddenly a niche for a super premium Zen APU appeared.

[alexhelvetica]

I believe 4x4 GBs is faster and looks better

and 2x8 GBs is cheaper also it is easier to upgrade! 

[RuLeZ]

Suddenly a niche for a super premium Zen APU appeared.

Oh yeah, 1024 sps + quad core Zen (if really will over +40% IPC)+ quad channel DDR4 would be a sweet HTPC.

[Wiplive]

So can anyone explain to me why most motherboards have 4 RAM slots if you say that most of them only support dual-channel memory?

[othertomperson]

Oh yeah, 1024 sps + quad core Zen (if really will over +40% IPC)+ quad channel DDR4 would be a sweet HTPC.

 

HTPC? They already make APUs that are capable of that for under £100 I was thinking an AMD equivalent to a 5820k with an iGPU that rivals an R9 280 The compute performance would be decent and it could make mid-high end gaming pretty cheap.

 

 

So can anyone explain to me why most motherboards have 4 RAM slots if you say that most of them only support dual-channel memory?

 

They still work, they just don't give you any bandwidth increase.

[RuLeZ]

 

HTPC? They already make APUs that are capable of that for under £100 I was thinking an AMD equivalent to a 5820k with an iGPU that rivals an R9 280 The compute performance would be decent and it could make mid-high end gaming pretty cheap.

 

 

 

They still work, they just don't give you any bandwidth increase.

 

1792 sps , I am not sure if quad channel DDR4 will be enough, would be better if they put some HBM on the mobo then.

[othertomperson]

1792 sps , I am not sure if quad channel DDR4 will be enough, would be better if they put some HBM on the mobo then.

 

True. I think this is the general direction they're looking to go in, though. 

[Technous285]

If you have to decide between off-the-bat dual-channel or future upgrade capability when choosing between 8GB sticks and 4GB sticks, the basic answer is: Get a single big stick as you ain't gonna get any benefit from dual-channel unless you do RAM-intensive work like video editing (in which case, you're best going for a 2x8GB kit at the starting of a build anyway).

There might be a small caveat to that though; If you've got high-speed RAM feeding the APU for both video and non-video processing in a system without a dedicated GPU, you can get a slight performance boost going dual-channel but rarely is it worth using 2x4GB sticks when a 1x8GB stick does all you need.

[VulcanAndroid]

You certainly have enough RAM for an average system. The only advantage you would get from more RAM sticks is the obvious increase in RAM but you do then take advantage of the dual channel features available.

[Sintezza]

- which platform are we talking about?

- What is the main usage for this system?

 

People should realy learn to create more structured topic´s.

And provide all the information needed.