Picking out the right RAM for 2950X shouldn’t be this hard

So I am nearly done choosing all my parts…and I am having a crisis for which the Internet cannot give me a clear answer: “ What memory (brand / speed) do I choose for the best possible performance on Threadripper CPU’s?

Community…please help.

Hmm,

ECC or no ECC?

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Great question…since I’m an average PC user who wishes to Game & encode…and run testing VM’s only…I’m thinking ECC is overkill for my use case.

I have a Designaire X399 mobo as well

Look at your motherboard’s QVL and pick the fastest one off that list.

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_x399-designare-ex_2950x.pdf

AMD processors seem to like 3200 MHz or above, so I’d start there.

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My challenge is that my research tells me a few things:

  1. Literally every blog I’ve read states that past 3200 MHz there’s a deminishing return for Threadripper

  2. Many claim only certain brands really work; my research seems to suggest only HyperX or GSkill Ram even works despite the QVL list from Gigabyte

  3. My Target is a 64 GB kit of Quad Channel (with RGB if I can get it) of 4 Dimms because filling all 8 slots would make future upgrades financially challenging to get to 128 GB in the future.

Honestly, I’m just burned out trying to find the right part. Literally every stick I search for has comments about Intel boards and situations. My other challenge is I simply do not have the experience to pick correctly.

So now…my patience running thin…I just want someone to tell me: “Get this kit…it works well in my Threadripper rig…you won’t have any issues if you buy this…”

What I’m not looking for is to be advised to RTM for my Mobo…I’ve done this for weeks…it’s not helping. I need recommendation.

When AMD sends members of the media ram, they usually send them 3200 GSkill Flare-X.

If that’s ok for you, get that, otherwise, pick something from this list: https://benzhaomin.github.io/bdiefinder/
otherwise - pick anything

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@risk - This is an awesome tool…thanks! I’m sure this will really help!

So, armed with some suggested tools I finally decided to pull the Trigger on two of these kits:

I opted for a tad faster than 2933 MHz so that I can overclock the RAM should I be bold enough. I did have to concede my targeted 16GB modules for 8 GB modules…so I’ll be filling every slot on the mobo…but whatev’s…it’ll probably function a lot better being so spread out across all Dimm’s anyways…or so I’m choosing to tell myself (it probably doesn’t matter.

That being said…my jump to 128 GB in 2-3 yrs will be financially painful…so I’m gonna live in 64GB land for a while till I can convince the Mrs. to double my system Ram as a future birthday gift or something.

Thanks for all your help. Here’s to hoping that these kits are Plug-n-Play with no issues…both QVL on Gigabyte & G. Skill both list these as compatible with the 2950X so we shall see…

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Should be fine basically. :slight_smile:

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I have a 2950x with Gigabyte x399 Aorus Xtreme MB and am having fits getting 8 sticks of 8GB Gskill Trident Z rgb mem (cas 16) to function.

I was wondering how your build was doing with 8 sticks of ram?

MM

X399 is quad channel, you get a benefit from using 4 dimms, not from using 8. With dual channel systems it´s the same 2 is better actually. Having more sticks is harder on the memory controller thus it´s harder to reach the same OCs sometimes. But on the same speed and timings there should not be a difference between 2 or 4 sticks in a dual channel system (or 4 and 8 in a quad channel system). At least not to my knownledge. Assuming they can run at the same speeds and timings in every configuration.

But looking at your RAM choice you get the benefit of more RGB I suppose. :joy:

What speed is it running at? You may need to back off to 2933.

I was able to get gskills 128gb kit to run fine at 2933.

On the 1950x it was sometimes necessary to tweak soc voltage, and some of the memory settings like procodt. Newer uefi with newer agesa seemed to improve that though.

See the video we did on 128gb ecc vs non ecc. Extensive benchmarking there. Some surprising results like 128gb of 2933 is faster for most, but not all, things vs 3200 32gb

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