64GB memory.. two sticks or four?

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

When I built my latest system I bought the cheapest 64GB I could buy.. DDR4, 2666Mhz, two sticks of 32GB. My motherboard supports up to 4800Mhz.

Looking at prices I could get 4800Mhz in 16GB sticks.. $418 for 4 sticks.

4600 I could get 2 sticks for $499.

Is 4 sticks vs 2 sticks worse? It's a tiny bit faster, same timings, but it's using all 4 slots as opposed to 2 slots.

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

I'd normally say go for 2 sticks just in case you need to add more ram later.... but in your case the question at 64GB more along the lines of how likely are you to need more, 128GB is a pretty niche use case.

IMO real world difference isn't worth worrying over, there might be some differences in benchmarks but again nothing worth worrying over... it's more important to have 'dual channel' etc.

Something to consider however is using 4 slots can sometimes impact stable high clock speeds for ram so you might not be able to hit 4800MHz with 4 sticks without tweaking settings or lowering the speeds... do you really need to go 4800, could you go the next step down to say 4000, potentially with better timings... I've also seen some reviews showing program/game instability with over 4000mhz ram, 3600-4000 seems the sweet spot.

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So the question is... will you ever need 128GB ram on this machine... if not I'd say go with 4 sticks at 4000Mhz (lowest timings you can find) instead.

Thanks! Answers I didn't know I needed!

I do have my board in dual channel.. in fact you can only install it this way or it won't work I think. Reading the manual it shows which two slots to put it in.

Yeah I originally had 128GB but settled on 64GB. I honestly only really wanted the 128 just to say I did it once. I do do video editing, though.

It seems that all the 4000 is the same timing (at least NewEgg where I am looking) 18-22-22-42.

Also if math is the thing.. then 4000 divided by 18 (CAS) is 222 and 3600 divided by 16 (CAS) is 225.. so in CAS terms they'd be about the same I guess.. so 4000 it seems the way to go.

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

What CPU are you running? Not all memory controllers like 4 dual rank modules at high speed (most 16GB sticks are single rank now though).

i7 11700kf

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

$400+ to change from 2666 to 4800, might be better to get a faster CPU. I ran 4*16GB dual rank at 3000 on am4 for a few years without issues, getting 4*16 to run at 4800 might be difficult. If you realy need 64GB of fast RAM, might be better to change to a DDR5 platform.

$229 to go from my 2666mhz to 4000mhz, 2x32GB. I'm also going to sell my current ram, so $229 minus what I sell this for.

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

I'm assuming you have if you're willing to spend so much, but have you checked what you're doing actually scales with memory speed? A lot of productivity stuff scales very well with cores (though some also really doesn't), but memory speed? Hmm.

Most DDR4 can easily be overclocked to 3000 and that usually gets you some 90%+ of the performance available.

I don't totally care if anything scales with memory speed. If it's available and not too expensive, I'm gonna get it regardless. But once I upgrade that'll be the end for a long time. I can't go up in processor because I'm not swapping out the motherboard.

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

I'm assuming you have if you're willing to spend so much, but have you checked what you're doing actually scales with memory speed? A lot of productivity stuff scales very well with cores (though some also really doesn't), but memory speed? Hmm.

Most DDR4 can easily be overclocked to 3000 and that usually gets you some 90%+ of the performance available.

I'll give that a shot.

 

[ChungKingCanSuckIt]

I'm assuming you have if you're willing to spend so much, but have you checked what you're doing actually scales with memory speed? A lot of productivity stuff scales very well with cores (though some also really doesn't), but memory speed? Hmm.

Most DDR4 can easily be overclocked to 3000 and that usually gets you some 90%+ of the performance available.

I selected XMP 2.0 profile, and then just changed to 3000 (IE: the built in easy overclocking on ASRock and I did not tinker with any other settings). I ran MEMTEST86+.. I think it took about 30 minutes or whatever I forget.. I was making some ramen, someone called so we were talking, I came back and it was done. PASS.

I wonder if I should try 3200.