Is less components still better?

[Ace]

I remember back in the olden days it used to be better to have two sticks of ram rather than four, something to do with bus, speed and other such very technical things.

My friend has asked me to build him a beast of a machine, but I've been out of the loop a good while (my last build is about 5 years old). Anyway I would like to know if one m.2 drive over two is preferred or if it doesn't matter these days?

Same goes from ram, he has given me the option of ddr5 either 2x 5200 mhz or 4x 5600mhz. Logic says the 5600mhz would be a little faster but again it's 4 sticks instead of 2 which used to be a no no.

 

[ChocAndGray]

How many sticks of ram is better depends on the motherboard topology.

With regards to how many m.2 drives it doesn't really matter. Running two in raid for example isn't worth the hassle.

There'd certainly be nothing wrong with having two separate drives so you could store games on one should you need to re-install the os as it makes it less hassle than having to re-download everything.

 

[BUDFORCE]

On an AMD platform yes 2 DIMMS is better than 4.

Not sure about current gen Intel, but as far as I know it never used to matter on Intel.

I built my pc very end of 2019 and just put 2x32gb in.

 

[Tetras]

The thing with M.2 slots is that you don't get many and often one is much better placed than the other (though that's less of an issue with ATX motherboards), so I wouldn't want to waste a slot on a small drive. Having two is not a bad idea though, but it's not actually necessary to have the OS on a M.2 drive, a small SATA drive would do (this is my preference), though it does introduce unnecessary cable clutter.

2 sticks are still better than 4 in most cases, in regards to compatibility and achieving higher speeds. But, since you're referring to DDR5, you might find this interesting:

 

[Haz123]

If you are doing professional video editing then you want your OS on a different SSD to the projects you work on. If you are just an average user it doesnt really matter and just get the capacity of drives you need.

For DDR5 over certain speeds you want to only have 2 sticks or ram. Watch the above vid and Jay will explain it way better than I could.