dual channel motherboard

[shaun mcintosh]

i just bought an asus maximus xii hero mother board, it is dual channel but has four slots for the ram ?#

am i right in saying the dual Chanel is 1 channel is equal to 2 stick of ram and dual is the 4 slots full ?

im new to building pcs and just wondering wither its worth the 4 x 8 or just 2 x 16 for my mobo.

 

[shaun mcintosh]

Two or four sticks will run dual channel

I'm just flung off by the dual channel and 4 ram slots messed with my head

 

[shaun mcintosh]

It's the way the motherboard addresses the RAM, so to run dual channel you either need 2 sticks of RAM or 4.

Sticks 1 & 2 will go into slots 2&4 or 1&3 (so theres a gap between them, check the motherboard manual to see which you need to use to activate dual channel?)

So if you get a 16GB memory kit, which has 2x8GB that will run as dual channel, if you later decide to buy another of the same kit so you now have 4 x 8GB sticks it'll still be dual channel, as it'll count 1&3 together & 2&4 together so dual channel.

If it was Quad Channel then it'll use all 4 sticks together.

This is a very simplistic view but hopefully give you a better idea?

Mate thats spot on easy enough to understand i did think that was kind of the case knowing that 2 stick would run as 1 channel. Appreciate the help mate