[SOLVED] 2 or 4 RAM sticks on a DUAL Channel Mobo?

[LeonidasOG]

Hello guys! I’m new to pc building and I’m about to build my very first gaming pc. I’m getting a ryzen 5 3600 and a b450 tomahawk. My friend also upgraded his gaming pc recently and he gave me 3x8gb ddr4 3000mhz ram sticks for free. Since I’m a newbie I wanted to ask if i should use only 2 of them for the dual channel or if I should buy another stick and go for 4x8gb ram. I will not need more than 16gb of ram for sure but in case I’d see a higher performance with 4 ram sticks instead of two I’d gladly spend another 50eur. Sorry if my questions seems a bit stupid, as I said I’m new to this whole pc building thing^^

 

[cdrkf]

Hello guys! I’m new to pc building and I’m about to build my very first gaming pc. I’m getting a ryzen 5 3600 and a b450 tomahawk. My friend also upgraded his gaming pc recently and he gave me 3x8gb ddr4 3000mhz ram sticks for free. Since I’m a newbie I wanted to ask if i should use only 2 of them for the dual channel or if I should buy another stick and go for 4x8gb ram. I will not need more than 16gb of ram for sure but in case I’d see a higher performance with 4 ram sticks instead of two I’d gladly spend another 50eur. Sorry if my questions seems a bit stupid, as I said I’m new to this whole pc building thing^^

Just use two of the sticks. That will be by far the easiest option to get them working and should perform best. Usually running all 4 sticks will reduce performance slightly (but increase capacity) however as you say, 16gb is fine for now.

You definitely don't want to run 3 as that would limit you to single channel, and it will be difficult to get a 4th ram module that exactly matches the other 3 (as even the same brand / model of memory can use different ram chips on it if manufactured at different times).

You can also get a big boost in performance on the R5 3600 by tuning the ram timings (just some settings you tweak in the bios). There is a great article about it on TechPowerup:
https://www.techspot.com/review/1891-ryzen-memory-performance-scaling/

They show that DDR4 3000 with good timings is pretty much as fast as really expensive DDR 4 3800 memory at it's stock settings.

 

[LeonidasOG]

Just use two of the sticks. That will be by far the easiest option to get them working and should perform best. Usually running all 4 sticks will reduce performance slightly (but increase capacity) however as you say, 16gb is fine for now.

You definitely don't want to run 3 as that would limit you to single channel, and it will be difficult to get a 4th ram module that exactly matches the other 3 (as even the same brand / model of memory can use different ram chips on it if manufactured at different times).

You can also get a big boost in performance on the R5 3600 by tuning the ram timings (just some settings you tweak in the bios). There is a great article about it on TechPowerup:
https://www.techspot.com/review/1891-ryzen-memory-performance-scaling/

They show that DDR4 3000 with good timings is pretty much as fast as really expensive DDR 4 3800 memory at it's stock settings.

Thank you very much dude! Have a good day