X99 boards - Why so many ram slots?

agnes

agnes

agnes

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Afternoon all, I want to upgrade my PC over the next year (yea, pretty vague right?).

At the moment, I have a i5 3570k and I'd like a nice shiny i7 5930k. This requires a X99 motherboard.

My spec is damn good at the moment, and there is no real need. But I've got a mATX setup and I want to go full tower again (Corsair 750d) and watercool the 980ti and cpu.

Soooooo, my question is this, why the F are there so many DIMM slots on X99 boards? Like seriously, 8 slots? I need 16GB. Nothing more, I game, not run applications to launch a cat into space. So, 4x4GB is enough for me.

If someone could point out my monumental stupidity on the subject and point me to normal boards. That'd be great.

Thanks!
 
Technology is moving forward. I think our server boards have 16/32 slots for RAM.

You don't have to use every slot.

Edit: Cost will likely be a major factor, some people will want to use 8 slots. So rather than producing 2/3 models of the same board, which will be a pain to manufacture and support. It's probably cheaper for them to bulk make a single model, even if it has more slots than the average user will require.
 
Because X99 uses quad channel ram, so at a minimum you need 4 ram sticks. Extra slots are there for adding more ram if required.
 
Semple said:
Technology is moving forward. I think our server boards have 16/32 slots for RAM.

You don't have to use every slot.

Edit: Cost will likely be a major factor, some people will want to use 8 slots. So rather than producing 2/3 models of the same board, which will be a pain to manufacture and support. It's probably cheaper for them to bulk make a single model, even if it has more slots than the average user will require.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I work in IT and understand blades needing multiple slots. Take in VM hosts for example. Insane amount of RAM.

As for the cost, makes sense I guess.

setter said:
Because X99 uses quad channel ram, so at a minimum you need 4 ram sticks. Extra slots are there for adding more ram if required.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhh, missed over that small (actually, damn important) part! quad channel!

I assume it's in a 1,2,3,4 - 7,8,9,10. So, one side is filled before the other and not 2 each side?

Either way, 16GB is more than enough for gaming. So, annoyingly, will have to accept one side being empty.
 
I think this is great news, it means we now can have double the amount of RAM ;). mITX was always limited to 16gb now you have 32gb!
 
agnes said:
Soooooo, my question is this, why the F are there so many DIMM slots on X99 boards? Like seriously, 8 slots? I need 16GB. Nothing more, I game, not run applications to launch a cat into space. So, 4x4GB is enough for me.
Click to expand...

Some people need the RAM.
 
agnes said:
Afternoon all, I want to upgrade my PC over the next year (yea, pretty vague right?).

At the moment, I have a i5 3570k and I'd like a nice shiny i7 5930k. This requires a X99 motherboard.

My spec is damn good at the moment, and there is no real need. But I've got a mATX setup and I want to go full tower again (Corsair 750d) and watercool the 980ti and cpu.

Soooooo, my question is this, why the F are there so many DIMM slots on X99 boards? Like seriously, 8 slots? I need 16GB. Nothing more, I game, not run applications to launch a cat into space. So, 4x4GB is enough for me.

If someone could point out my monumental stupidity on the subject and point me to normal boards. That'd be great.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The 'e' in haswell-e (and broadwell-e when it comes out) stands for enthusiast. X99 is not your run off the mill consumer product its targeted at people that are going to be running very highly specced systems. 16gb may seem like overkill now bit I remember when I thought a friends pc with 128mb of memory was overkill!!
 
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