Ram For I7 6950X Question

[Ray_]

thank you so much linustechtips community
for all the help you've been giving me this week to be able to build my new pc
i ordered i7 6950x  , but i have a little issue
 

1- quad vs dual channels
this processor supports quad channel memory
and the motherboard " asus x99 ii " have 8 slots " 4 left " and " 4 right "
but i only ordered 2 sticks of ram 32 gb " 2x 16 gb "
so for now is it going to work with dual channels only ? huge performance loss ?
 

2- ram compatibility
Kingston 16GB HyperX Fury Black DDR4 2400MHz CL15 PC Ram
the ram are not in a " kit " , i bought them separately from the same brand
would they still work together ? " they are identical ". same everything .
you might ask why not 32gb " 4x 8gb " simply because ..
 

A - the 32 gb kit is super expensive " another brand '
 

B - i am planing to add 128 gb later ,so if i buy 32gb kit now
and add another 32 gb kit later , the 2 kits are diffrent ! right ?
it would be the same if i bought them separately
the only solution is to buy 128 gb kit at once and its way out of my budget
and i don't need that power for now .
 

C-  i am planning to add 128 gb in future
so the sticks have to be 16 gb each , because i have 8 slots .
 

Motherboard link :https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-A-II/
Ram Link : http://www.hyperxgaming.com/us/memory/fury-ddr4
i believe this picture is the ram details
 " in the attachment "
would they work together ? and the future 2 sticks too ?
as long as i am using the same brand and size and frequency

[Freezanator]

1. Performance loss is no more than 1-3 FPS while gaming. 

2. All of the sticks will work fine as long as their RAM type and clock speed is the same. Manufacturers don't matter.

[porina]

Some tasks maybe limited by the ram bandwidth if you fully use all the cores of the CPU, and quad channel would help in that case. It really depends on the task. Many will not be significantly affected. Others could be really crippled especially as the ram is a low speed grade too.

 

Buying multiple sticks of the same ram is generally ok but there is a small chance of compatibility problems.

[Ray_]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Some tasks maybe limited by the ram bandwidth if you fully use all the cores of the CPU, and quad channel would help in that case. It really depends on the task. Many will not be significantly affected. Others could be really crippled especially as the ram is a low speed grade too.

 

Buying multiple sticks of the same ram is generally ok but there is a small chance of compatibility problems.

80% of my ram usage will be doing 3d render in cinema 4d , and adobe after effects " can eat up to 256 gb ram " .
so now you know my usage , what should i do from here ?

[Ray_]

6 minutes ago, Freezanator said:

1. Performance loss is no more than 1-3 FPS while gaming. 

2. All of the sticks will work fine as long as their RAM type and clock speed is the same. Manufacturers don't matter.

i agree with you , thank you so much , but sometimes i read scary things !
see this
 

Quote

"" There's a lot of truth to it, mixing set can be problematic, even of the same exact model, and the likelyhood of having problems increases as the freq goes up, that's why DRAM is offered in such a wide variety of number of sticks per package, ""

 

[porina]

1 minute ago, Ray_ said:

80% of my ram usage will be doing 3d render in cinema 4d , and adobe after effects " can eat up to 256 gb ram " .
so now you know my usage , what should i do from here ?

I'm not familiar with the performance demands of that software, but if you could use more ram, you might want to get more sooner than later.

[Ray_]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I'm not familiar with the performance demands of that software, but if you could use more ram, you might want to get more sooner than later.

 

i just don't get it , someone was saying
its a quad channels  you can't run it with 2 sticks you need 4 sticks at least
otherwise it might not even boot !
i believe this is wrong because what supports quad channels should support dual channels too i am right ?
 

another one saying
if it worked , you'll be running dual channels 50%  drop in performance
how is  that right ?

thank you for your time .

[DunePilot]

Generally the rule of thumb is 2GB of RAM per thread... 3GB in extremely heavy 4k rendering.You have 20 threads. I'd try 64GB in a 16X4 kit first and see how it runs before jumping higher.

[Ray_]

5 minutes ago, DunePilot said:

Generally the rule of thumb is 2GB of RAM per thread... 3GB in extremely heavy 4k rendering.You have 20 threads. I'd try 64GB in a 16X4 kit first and see how it runs before jumping higher.

thanks for the advice but my main concern right now is
will 2 sticks work together if i bought them separately
because the kit is only available from different brand
and it cost 250$ more , and its only 32 gb kit
so if i buy it and buy another one after 4 months or so
the 2 kits would be diffrent just if i bought them separately !
so there is no point of buying a kit unless you won't add more later .

[DunePilot]

1 minute ago, Ray_ said:

thanks for the advice but my main concern right now is
will 2 sticks work together if i bought them separately
because the kit is only available from different brand
and it cost 250$ more , and its only 32 gb kit
so if i buy it and buy another one after 4 months or so
the 2 kits would be diffrent just if i bought them separately !
so there is no point of buying a kit unless you won't add more later .

Are you in the US, can you link what kits you're looking at?

I can look on newegg and find you some ram. Yeah you can run two 32GB kits together if they are the same timings and clock. I would personally try to stick to identical RAM if I was pairing two 32GB kits together though. Mix and match will probably work fine but if you can avoid it I would. 

[porina]

22 minutes ago, Ray_ said:

i just don't get it , someone was saying
its a quad channels  you can't run it with 2 sticks you need 4 sticks at least
otherwise it might not even boot !
i believe this is wrong because what supports quad channels should support dual channels too i am right ?
 

another one saying
if it worked , you'll be running dual channels 50%  drop in performance
how is  that right ?

thank you for your time .

You can run with fewer channels than the maximum supported. You could even run a single stick if you wanted to. So don't worry about running fewer sticks. If you download the manual for the motherboard, it will show you some example configurations of where to put however many sticks of ram.

 

The performance is only part right. You get 50% the ram bandwidth running dual channel compared to quad channel. How that impacts performance depends on the application. Some might not be affected noticeably, others can be limited by the ram.

[Ray_]

26 minutes ago, DunePilot said:

Are you in the US, can you link what kits you're looking at?

I can look on newegg and find you some ram. Yeah you can run two 32GB kits together if they are the same timings and clock. I would personally try to stick to identical RAM if I was pairing two 32GB kits together though. Mix and match will probably work fine but if you can avoid it I would. 

thank you so much for your time
nope i am not in the us
i bought : Kingston 2x 16GB HyperX Fury Black DDR4 2400MHz CL15 PC Ram
and the only 32gb " x2 16gb " kit i found was
CORSAIR 32GB (2X16GB) DOMINATOR Platinum DDR4 3200Mhz CL16 Dual Ram Kit , almost double the price

so i was concerned that even though i bought the same brand and model
i will face a chance that they might not work together . since i bought them separately and not in a kit .

[Ray_]

12 minutes ago, porina said:

You can run with fewer channels than the maximum supported. You could even run a single stick if you wanted to. So don't worry about running fewer sticks. If you download the manual for the motherboard, it will show you some example configurations of where to put however many sticks of ram.

 

The performance is only part right. You get 50% the ram bandwidth running dual channel compared to quad channel. How that impacts performance depends on the application. Some might not be affected noticeably, others can be limited by the ram.

 

thanks for your efforts and your time
I appreciated so much , porina you are the best !
i will continue on my build and if something went wrong i will post .
thanks again and have a nice day .

[SpaceGhostC2C]

47 minutes ago, Ray_ said:

i agree with you , thank you so much , but sometimes i read scary things !
see this
 

 

 

3 minutes ago, Ray_ said:

so i was concerned that even though i bought the same brand and model
i will face a chance that they might not work together . since i bought them separately and not in a kit .

 

You need to understand that the "compatibility issue" is only about RAM overclocking, XMP, etc. Therefore, the worst case scenario is that you have to run all your sticks at 2133 MHz, CL15. Every stick has to work at the JEDEC standard speed, otherwise it is not DDR4 compliant and it's a straight RMA. Brand, model, kit matching and whatnot is no excuse for 2133 CL15, at that speed you must be able to fill every single slot with a different model or demand your money back.

Most of the times, sticks with the same speed and timings (all of them!) will run together, kit or not, but remember: worst case scenario, you set them to JEDEC standard and it has to work.

[Ray_]

47 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

 

 

You need to understand that the "compatibility issue" is only about RAM overclocking, XMP, etc. Therefore, the worst case scenario is that you have to run all your sticks at 2133 MHz, CL15. Every stick has to work at the JEDEC standard speed, otherwise it is not DDR4 compliant and it's a straight RMA. Brand, model, kit matching and whatnot is no excuse for 2133 CL15, at that speed you must be able to fill every single slot with a different model or demand your money back.

Most of the times, sticks with the same speed and timings (all of them!) will run together, kit or not, but remember: worst case scenario, you set them to JEDEC standard and it has to work.

wow this is the type of explaining i was looking for
so it's all about overclocking , well good news for me i don't want to overclock at all
and 2133 is good for me , i can't thank you enough , now i can simple just disable XMP if they don't work together and add as many ram as i want ! million thanks !
by the way , if the ram ain't working together the system won't boot to desktop then ?
or it would say something like an error message or not recognizing one of the rams ?

[DunePilot]

Yeah if you bought this. :"Kingston 2x 16GB HyperX Fury Black DDR4 2400MHz CL15 PC Ram" I would try to get the same thing in the future to hit your 64GB target that you want. But if you can't find it when the time comes you should be alright just grabbing another kit of comparable 16GB sticks to add. Personally though I would try to match it up if nothing else because I'm kind of a stickler about looks as much as performance lol.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

39 minutes ago, Ray_ said:

by the way , if the ram ain't working together the system won't boot to desktop then ?
or it would say something like an error message or not recognizing one of the rams ?

It depends on the motherboard. In principle, you could not even reach BIOS if the RAM is not working. In that case, you would need to remove some sticks, try with one at a time until you can boot, and then change settings. Other motherboards will change RAM settings on their own if they fail the POST, until they find a working setting, and then prompt you to enter BIOS.

I don't have experience with the model you mentioned (I wish ), but some Asus boards have a "Mem OK!" button to reset memory settings if it fails to boot. I believe you do have a Q-code display on the board: a particular error code will be displayed if the computer is failing to boot due to RAM issues. If that happens, you can use the Mem OK button if you have one, or go for the manual solution and remove/reseat sticks.

It could also happen that it ignores some modules (the only time it happened to me I removed the sticks, put them all back, and in the next boot they were all recognized, so maybe it was just me not installing them properly).

[Ray_]

4 hours ago, DunePilot said:

Yeah if you bought this. :"Kingston 2x 16GB HyperX Fury Black DDR4 2400MHz CL15 PC Ram" I would try to get the same thing in the future to hit your 64GB target that you want. But if you can't find it when the time comes you should be alright just grabbing another kit of comparable 16GB sticks to add. Personally though I would try to match it up if nothing else because I'm kind of a stickler about looks as much as performance lol.

yup , look is important my friend
well thank you so much for the help and informations
and i will do as you mentioned , down the road if i didn't find the same brand
i will go with another one as long it's the same size and frequency
i don't know if they have to be the same CL number
thank you again and have a nice day

[Ray_]

3 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

It depends on the motherboard. In principle, you could not even reach BIOS if the RAM is not working. In that case, you would need to remove some sticks, try with one at a time until you can boot, and then change settings. Other motherboards will change RAM settings on their own if they fail the POST, until they find a working setting, and then prompt you to enter BIOS.

I don't have experience with the model you mentioned (I wish ), but some Asus boards have a "Mem OK!" button to reset memory settings if it fails to boot. I believe you do have a Q-code display on the board: a particular error code will be displayed if the computer is failing to boot due to RAM issues. If that happens, you can use the Mem OK button if you have one, or go for the manual solution and remove/reseat sticks.

It could also happen that it ignores some modules (the only time it happened to me I removed the sticks, put them all back, and in the next boot they were all recognized, so maybe it was just me not installing them properly).

too many valuable informations , you are profissional my friend , thank you so much for your time and efforts ,
if it wasn't for you i was thinking about canceling the order
because everytime i searched this subject i saw " it won't work "
i thought that only kits would work together
but you clarified everything to me , now i can buy the ram separately
and keep adding as much as i want in the future as long as i am  keeping
the same size and the same  frequency without worrying too much
thanks agin , have a nice day ^__^

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 hours ago, Ray_ said:

too many valuable informations , you are profissional my friend , thank you so much for your time and efforts ,
if it wasn't for you i was thinking about canceling the order
because everytime i searched this subject i saw " it won't work "
i thought that only kits would work together
but you clarified everything to me , now i can buy the ram separately
and keep adding as much as i want in the future as long as i am  keeping
the same size and the same  frequency without worrying too much
thanks agin , have a nice day ^__^

You're welcome  

Just remember I'm not reimbursing you if it doesn't work  

[laushik]

Oh and btw you should probably give back NASA their CPU.