4x4gb or 2x8gb sticks of RAM?

[WalterBlahh]

At the moment i have 2x4gbs DDR3 1600ghz sticks of RAM. havent checked the brand its just some regular brand nothing to special.

Looking to add and update the RAM on my rig. what configuration should i do 4x4gb or 2x8gb sticks of ram? if anything im going with CORSAIR or G.Skill for the RAM.

This is my motherboard.

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97S-SLI-Krait-Edition.html#hero-specification

[Electronics Wizardy]

1x 16 or 2x8.

 

Normally use the fewest sticks you can so that you can upgrade latter.

[Killervolt]

Depends on the CPU, but for most go for 2x8 (Dual Channel) so you can upgrade later.

[Franpadi]

dual channel vs quad channel makes no difference and with 2x8 or 1x16 you can add more later

[aisle9]

The Krait supports 32GB of RAM, so I'd go 2x8. It's not terribly likely that you'd ever need 32GB of RAM until long after the Haswell chips are hopelessly obsolete, but it leaves the option open if you ever feel like, I don't know, rendering six 4K 3D videos at once while playing Witcher 3, running a stress test and having 1,477 Chrome tabs open in the background.

[WalterBlahh]

Just now, Killervolt said:

Depends on the CPU, but for most go for 2x8 (Dual Channel) so you can upgrade later.

I have a 

3.20 gigahertz Intel Core i5-4570
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
6144 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Not hyper-threaded

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, WalterBlahh said:

I have a 

3.20 gigahertz Intel Core i5-4570

If the 4x4 kit is appreciably cheaper, no harm in going for it. I don't think you'll ever find a workload requiring 32GB of RAM that wouldn't pwn a Haswell i5 long before RAM became an issue.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, WalterBlahh said:

At the moment i have 2x4gbs DDR3 1600ghz sticks of RAM. havent checked the brand its just some regular brand nothing to special.

Looking to add and update the RAM on my rig. what configuration should i do 4x4gb or 2x8gb sticks of ram? if anything im going with CORSAIR or G.Skill for the RAM.

This is my motherboard.

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97S-SLI-Krait-Edition.html#hero-specification

4x4GB sticks look better in my opinion. Synthetically speaking, I've heard running less sticks yields better results but real-world performance isn't even noticeable. True, less sticks does leave you room to upgrade but apart from that there isn't really a benefit. Get what's cheapest and what'll fit your needs.

 

EDIT: You'll also yield less voltage and produce less heat with 2x8GB sticks.

[Energycore]

I see two reasons to get 2x8GB:

 

- It OCs better than 4 DIMMs

- It's upgradeable whereas 4x4GB isn't, assuming not X99.