4 Dimm vs 2 (the age old question reborn for a newb not finding answers)

[cwegrecki]

Hello I am wondering if it is still true that by using 4 Dimms instead of 2 you are adding extra stress to your memory controller, and what exactly that will do (what kind of harm) if you are NOT overclocking. I am using the Gigabyte ga-z87x-ud4h with 16Gb of Corsair Vengeance Pro Ram in either 2x8Gb or 4x4Gb configurations. And please dont say just use 2x8 for upgradablility. I dont need or want more than 16Gb Ever for the life of this build. TIA

 

[Snipergod87]

TBH I have never seen any bad effect running 2 DIMM's vs 4. Both my current build (and my old one) are/were running 4 DIMM's. My old build was running 4 DIMM's of DDR2 1066 (2x1GB,2x2GB) (the board did not support 4 DIMM's at that speed, but it worked just fine, with the DRAM at a slightly lower voltage too!), this was when the Memory Controller Hub was built into the North Bridge). My current system is 4 DIMM's of DDR3-2133 (4x4GB), and has been solid since day 1.

Where I work we have cheap desktop's and server's with all DIMM's full without issue also.

 

[inzone]

Using 4 sticks will require more of a power draw from the controller so that's why it's better to use two sticks. It just may give you better performance by using two sticks. You can see the difference in the WEI if you have both 2 and 4 stick configurations.

 

[maddogfargo]

AMD CPUs are more sensitive to this. But even an Intel CPU will need more volts to drive/control 4 dimms.

If you aren't going to overclock your CPU or RAM it won't matter. If you do plan to OC and tweak, 2 DIMMS is the way to go.

 

[cwegrecki]

Using 4 sticks will require more of a power draw from the controller so that's why it's better to use two sticks. It just may give you better performance by using two sticks. You can see the difference in the WEI if you have both 2 and 4 stick configurations.

Isn't that why the motherboard has a 2nd dedicated power supply for the CPU to provide a better and more constant power draw?


And if they reason that is potentially worse is because of more heat then as long as i have a good liquid cooling wont that compensate for the extra heat and prevent any overheating.

I will try your idea of testing both setups to see if it gives any difference.

 

[cwegrecki]

TBH I have never seen any bad effect running 2 DIMM's vs 4. Both my current build (and my old one) are/were running 4 DIMM's. My old build was running 4 DIMM's of DDR2 1066 (2x1GB,2x2GB) (the board did not support 4 DIMM's at that speed, but it worked just fine, with the DRAM at a slightly lower voltage too!), this was when the Memory Controller Hub was built into the North Bridge). My current system is 4 DIMM's of DDR3-2133 (4x4GB), and has been solid since day 1.

Where I work we have cheap desktop's and server's with all DIMM's full without issue also.

Im glad to hear that long term use isnt a problem with all 4 dimms used. Especially since I wont be OC on this build I feel safe using the 4x4gb dimms, and that frees up the other 2x8gb sticks to use in my video editing machine so i can max it out at 32 for pre rendering my videos.

 

[inzone]

To give you an example , the motherboard that I have has two 8 pin CPU connectors and an additional 6 pin power connector for the memory slots. This is because it has 8 memory slots and a 64gb total so there is a power draw on the CPU memory controller and there are additional power connectors for this and overclocking.

 

[ColdCold]

Old thread but I wanted to point out a couple things. There's certainly nothing wrong with running either two or four DIMMS long term, but there are some advantages to using two that others have pointed out already. Another reason that 2 DIMMS is better, given the same amount of total memory, if you cram it all onto two DIMMS instead of four, the circuits are packed roughly twice as densely inside the chips, right? Twice as dense means roughly half the distance between circuits, and half the distance for electrons to travel is going to be measurably faster. Of course those are all back-of-the-napkin estimates. In the real world, YMMV.