i5 4460 ram requirements?

[Gelo042]

I am going to buy a i5 4460 for my first build. I was going to use the fx 6300 with a decent cooler to OC or a fx 8350 with just the stock cooler at stock speed but I decided to go with the i5 4460 instead. I did some research regarding the cpu and found out it has better single core performance than the fx cpus. It also has 4 cores which is enough for gaming since most games won't be able to fully utilise the extra cores of the fx cpus.

I am still confused with the ram compatibility of the cpu. It says that it supports max 2 memory channels and only 1333/1600. Does that mean it only supports 2 sticks of ram at 1600? I checked pc builds using this cpu in pcpartpicker and all of them only used 2 sticks of ram. I know 8gb of ram is enough for gaming but I was still wondering since my motherboard has 4 slots of ram.

The parts I will use so far are:
Intel Core i5-4460
Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H
Kingston HyperX Fury 4GB 1866 CL10

Sorry if this is a noob question but what I would like to know is that if I can put 4 ram sticks and if I should under clock the ram to 1600

 

[Gelo042]

Also planning to get a gtx 970

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

The board has Support for DDR3 1600/1333 MHz memory modules , so you will run it at 1600.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4971#sp

Always purchase ram in matching pairs.

 

[dudeman509]

Yes, DDR = dual data rate. 2 sticks @ 800 MHz for a total combined throughput of 1600 MHz in dual-channel configuration - having 2 sticks will take advantage of the full memory bandwidth of the processor/motherboard. Some higher-end components support triple or quad-channel memory.

I'd suggest going for 8 gigs in a 2x4 configuration if you're going to spend that much on the rest of your build - RAM is cheap. Windows with 4 gigs today can be a bit slow at times, especially when multitasking or exiting from a game.