Quad/dual what is the difference?

[Drewb]

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting the Asus Z170 Maximus VII Hero - Skylake Core i7 6700K CPU & Motherboard Bundle **£30 Saving**

It's the same price for 2x8Gb Dual or 4x4Gb Quad memory, what is the difference, is one method faster? (apart from using 2 or 4 slots).

Also I notice anything over 2133MHz is considered overclocking by the motherboard manual, if I went for 3000MHz for example would I need to manually overclock or would the motherboard do it automatically?

Thanks

 

[RJC]

For Skylake quad or dual channel memory makes no difference as its the memory controller which determines how the memory is running, Skylake only has a dual channel so using a quad channel memory kit or dual channel makes no difference - the kits are matched ram, so can if you wanted to use 2 x dual channel kits in a socket 2011 setup.

For the memory speed you should just enable the XMP profile and this should setup the speeds, but if not you may need to manually overclock the system bus and change the memory multiplier (it may be worth reading up on this or search through the 8pack section.

 

[Drewb]

Thanks, I'll go for 2x8 in that case.