Question Help with optimum dual channel configuration

[torakjm]

I'm cobbling a desktop together from various old parts. Among these are four matching sticks of 1gb ram and one stick of 4gb, as well as a motherboard with 4 DIMM slots and dual channel potential. If I put the 4gb stick in the first slot and 1gb sticks in the other three, will the identical module of two 1gb ram be able to make use of dual channel configuration? All the online guides I've read emphasize 'even numbers' of ram but I don't exactly understand what they mean by that.

On the other hand, would running all four 1gb sticks while omitting the 4gb stick make programs not needing more than 4gb run faster, or does the capacity of more ram dwarf this benefit? How exactly should I install these, and is dual channel really as impactful as youtube benchmarkers make it out to be?

As you can probably tell, I'm new to this sort of thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[geofelt]

I think total ram trumps dual channel.
The largest total will be the 4gb stick and 3 1gbsticks.
You will have 5gb on one channel and 2gb on the other.
If this is an intel board, 2gb on each channel will run in dual channel mode and the odd 3gb will be in single channel mode.
This is called flex mode.

The sticks really are not matching so you may have difficulty in getting some or all of them to work together.