[SOLVED] 2 x 16GB or 4 x 8GB DDR4 RAM? What's best?

[fragment0]

Hi peeps,

I am planning to upgrade 16gb to 32gb, I have 4 ram slots in my crappy asrock b360m xtreme motherboard that i cant even find a manual for on asrock's site and they refer to cyberpower, but that's another story...

I now have 2 x 8gb 3000 XPG ADATA RAMies in there now, i want to get 32gb, so im wondering what the difference is between 2x16 and 4x8gb and what's better to get?
This is an i7 9700k, rtx 2070, 600W, 240SSD, 2 TB HD. I will be totally replacing my current ram to avoide compatibility/crashing issues if i was to mix them up, but just not sure if i need 4 ram slots fillied in or just 2 of 16GB each would do the job well.

I'd really appreciate constructive feedback and proper reasoning/explanation for the above mentioned. Thank you

 

[kanewolf]

A 9700K CPU is a dual channel RAM controller. 2x16GB is optimum. You will get the highest stable memory clocks with two DIMMs.

 

[fragment0]

A 9700K CPU is a dual channel RAM controller. 2x16GB is optimum. You will get the highest stable memory clocks with two DIMMs.

Oh, gotcha, so that crappy motherboard i have should also be okay for 32gb in 2 sticks, if that even matters? Alrighty thank u

 

[kanewolf]

That motherboard looks like it was sold through Cyberpower PC. All the other Asrock B360 motherboards support 16GB/slot so I don't believe you will have any issues.

 

[fragment0]

Just another side question from a noobie🌞 is there anything special that in need to known or do once i pluged in the new memory sticks in? Do i need to plug in new ram and then install something on the computer itself or is it plug and play? Can i connect both 16gb sticks in at the same time or should do one at a time? Is there a reading period that my computer would go through once new ram is installed or nothing that i need to do except for checking and making sure my pc shows 32gb via cpuz software or anyhithing se

 

[kanewolf]

Just another side question from a noobie🌞 is there anything special that in need to known or do once i pluged in the new memory sticks in? Do i need to plug in new ram and then install something on the computer itself or is it plug and play? Can i connect both 16gb sticks in at the same time or should do one at a time? Is there a reading period that my computer would go through once new ram is installed or nothing that i need to do except for checking and making sure my pc shows 32gb via cpuz software or anyhithing se

RAM does not require any special steps. Go into the BIOS and verify the BIOS sees the RAM. I would recommend boot and run with default memory timing for a day or a week to be sure everything is stable. If you want to verify stability more, then run MEMTEST for 6 or 8 hours.
The OS should just use the available RAM. I have 32GB in my primary desktop. I use 8GB as a RAMDISK.