Buying DDR4-3200 Questions. RANK, 2 vs. 4 DIMM CL14- - CL16 questions

Hi Folks,

I plan on buying a B550 motherboard, a Ryzen 7-5800X and would like 32GB of DDR-3200. I do not plan on overclocking. I use W10, Adobe photographer software package (Lightroom/Photoshop/RAW), some Solidworks and MS Office.

I have been looking at DRAM choices and I am stumped. I have selection questions.

I read the following paragraph on Hardware Times:

“On consumer PCs, having all four DIMMs installed is akin to having a dual-channel, dual-rank configuration. Generally, it’s been seen that dual-rank configs are 5-10% faster than single-rank PCs, with the benefits being more pronounced on AMD’s Ryzen CPUs.”

I have also read about single and dual RANKed DRAM.

My initial thoughts were to buy something like GSkill’s 8GB X 4 CL14 Kit.
Part number: F4-3200C14Q-32GFX Flare X Series. There is no information as to whether this memory is Single or Dual Rank.

I would like to know if the hardware times piece is accurate and that by using Four memory sticks I would get some performance improvement?

What percentage performance hit would moving from a CL14 to CL16 Module make?

How do I find out what the RANK is of the various QVL offerings?

The DDR4 specification mentions 1.2v operating voltage but all the QVL modules that I reviewed are 1.35V. Is that just the way it is now?

Is there anything else that I should be aware of or looking at?

Thank you for your insights.

I dont think there is any “real world” benefit going from 2x16 GB to 4x8 GB
The AM4 platform is only dual channel. Does not matter if 2 or 4 slots are populated.

Waiting to get proven wrong.

This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.