If I use the above ram and purchase it twice giving me 64gb instead of 32gb would it still function in dual channel? Or would that make it single channel using two kits for one build?
Yeah that will work fine
The channels have to do with the slots, but yeah your good, might not hit the speed(probably will since only 2400) What do you need that much ram for though?
1 Like
I was just thinking initially I would opt to get 32gb and upgrade on an as needed basis from there. VM, running game servers.
honestly it would hurt me to buy ram with todays pricing, but if your cool with it go for it. @KemoKa73 has some cheap DDR4 as a hold over if you are ok with waiting for prices to drop.
My only question is why are you going to pay over 700 dollars for comparitively slow ram.
My thinkpad’s ram runs at 2400.
1 Like
If it were me, I would buy the biggest sticks you could at a reasonable speed. Also verify the max your board can support. Once you know the max, divide that by the number of slots and that will give the max size DIMM. When I configure servers I always do this and then match the channels (2, 3, 4, 8, etc) to figure out what size sticks I’m going to use. If you have 4 DIMM slots and the board supports 64GB with dual channel support(which I’m assuming from your question), then I would buy a 2x16GB kit and leave the other 2 empty for now. You can always buy another matching kit later if needed.
As far as speed is concerned, make sure your motherboard supports XMP. If it doesn’t you can buy faster ram and it’ll only run at the highest speed the motherboard supports. I don’t know how common boards are that don’t support XMP because I don’t build many workstations these days, but I would imagine most support it if you bought it standalone. Can’t speak for the ones that come in OEM systems. I also personally favor lower CAS timings over MHz, but good ram will have good specs for both.
1 Like
Borads “Support” higher speeds but only QVL Ram is guaranteed to reach that pretty sure
It’s DDR4, yours is probably DDR3. They do not have the same throughput.
But yeah $700 for just RAM! That’s insane. Could do a whole build for that.
I am building a threadripper based semi server is all. So I figured I needed faster Ram, but it still has to be DDR4. I have been using DDR4 since 2015 when I bought my first x99 cpu and board (5820k). My main system is Ryzen 1700 now that uses 32gb of ddr4 and this server which will be used for home backups and running vm for game servers needs DDR4, but since I wont be doing creativity stuff I figured the slower RAM wouldn’t hurt.
This is going to be essentially a NAS/Game Server in one. I already have 4 6tb hdds.
RAM was way way cheaper not too long ago. Wait for it to go down again before you start shelling out $700 for 64GB of RAM. That’s Apple levels of money for that much RAM, that’s crazy.
1 Like
You’ll just have 2 dual channel kits installed. It won’t change it to single channel unless there is some compatibility problem. Usually that works ok… except things like overclocking can really screw things up when using more than 2 sticks of RAM.
Check the motherboard QVL to see if there is maybe a 64GB kit that is tested up to whaatever speed you are looking for.
(yes researching this stuff sucks, but it’s the only way to be sure)
I know its DDR4. Who the hell needs 3 GHZ ram. In the normal market.
And if its for ryzen spare your self a headache and don’t buy two separate kits, it wil be tricky. Got myself two separate kits and some way down subtimings just don’t work together.
I will not comment on use case, just FYI.
For $6 less you can get 3200MHz ram, which is Samsung “b” die and easily posted at 3066MHz in DOCP without tweaking on my Threadripper build. That is quad channel, so 4x 16GB sticks, 64GB total. Bought two pairs.
I feel stupid. I have been looking at dual channel ram for thread ripper.
So? Why not?
I should be looking at quad channel memory.
Quad channel memory is just the amount of sticks. They are still just dual channel.
Just factory test to run together.
If the OP has a CPU that supports quad channel memory and buys 4 matching DIMMS, it will run in quad channel. If they only want to buy 2, then it will run in dual channel. I like to always match the max channels the CPU will support for best performance. On servers they have 8 channel memory configs which would require 8 matching DIMMS.
Check your mobo’s compatibility list before you buy the RAM, especially if you are looking to get 3200MHz kits.