Which is better, 2x16GB or 4x8GB DDR4-3000?

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Hydros

Hydros

Commendable
Jan 1, 2017
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Hello,

I am building my PC, mainly for gaming as well as content creation such as Video Editing, Animation, etc. I know for Gaming 16GB is more ideal, however, I would rather build this PC to last without needing any upgrades for a while. So, with that I am going with 32GB DDR4-3000 Memory. The Motherboard I have is the MSI X99A SLI Krait Edition ATX LGA2011-3. CPU: Intel i7 6800K. I know that it can support Quad Channel DDR4. However I am just seeking input as to what I should get, 2 Sticks vs 4 Sticks of the RAM I am looking at. Money isn't an issue. I am just seeking for outside input as basically I can not decide which I want to go with. I can support Quad Channel fine, and also I know that Dual channel would be less strain on the Memory Controller as well. For what I want to do I want to lean towards the 4x8GB sticks for Quad Channel for Video Editing, Animation, Graphic Design, etc and also gaming will be done as well. Any Thoughts?

RAM I am looking at:
2 x16GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236135&cm_re=Corsair_Vengeance-_-20-236-135-_-Product
4 x8GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236137&cm_re=Corsair_Vengeance-_-20-236-137-_-Product
 
Solution
steffeeh
It's true this applies to most chipsets, but from what I've understood X99 is the current #1 chipset where this issue is the most apparent (Z170 being #2 but much less).
You won't necessarily need to pull down the bandwidth, as it's more of a compability issue than clockspeed issue, so it only applies to a certain part of the spectrum of all bandwidths. People have reported that once you go above 3000MHz and to 3200MHz it actually starts to work again.

Here's the comment from when I heard about it the first time:
"2400MHz is fine.
2600MHz is fine as long as you only populate half of the slots and tweak the volts slightly (this applies to everything that follows)
2666MHz is a bitch.
2800MHz LOLz
3000MHz stop it, your killing me...
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Well my Motherboard has 8 RAM slots not the standard 4. So upgrading would be no issue as it supports up to 128GB. Also aesthetics wise I would love to have 4 but I want to focus more for performance. Correct me if I am wrong but Dual channel works no matter the slot correct?

Thank you for the input as well! :)
 
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Ah okay, been a while since I have built a PC haha. Way its set up for mine is Black, White, Black White on each side of the CPU. Would video editing have a insignificant performance increase with Quad over Dual? I know gaming really makes no difference, at least nothing noticeable. Price wise for the two I am looking at there is only a $2 difference. I am very indecisive lol. I would have to say then that Content Creation would be the major concern vs gaming.

But your recommendation for a rig doing video creation and gaming going with dual channel?
 
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Theoretically quad channel is faster , really you're not going to see a difference.
You could still buy 4 sticks & run dual channel or quad with them.

If looks & symmetry are whats playing on your mind you need to drag your mb manual out & look at the slot configurations on the board though.
 
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Dual channel benefits gaming and such, while quad channel benefits content creation and editing. Though the difference in real life is pretty much unnoticable as far as I've heard/read.
 
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Well the X99A Krait Ed. slot config has four slots on each side of the CPU altering like Black white black white. So ultimately I can put two on each side in the white or black slots of the board for Dual/Quad Channel. So aesthetics wouldn't be a problem. Just rather have all my info before getting 2 sticks or 4. Yeah I figured having 4 I can run quad or dual channel on them too
 
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Yeah I have read gaming is better for dual and content creation is for content creation/editing. Although as you stated I have read that is virtually unnoticeable really. Aesthetics wise i guess four would be better to look at vs 2 sticks and having the space just be empty and stuff. Quad vs dual on gaming its not even noticeable at all hardly i believe
 
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Yeah the symmetry as well as aesthetic with the four would to me anyway look way better than having the two sticks with the space between them. I could use all four white OR black slots right? I was thinking using the 4 black slots to match the ram sticks since they are black as well with blue LED. but for the white I plan to put in black light LEDs to make the white pop more in the case as well. But bottom line 4 sticks, Quad channel being ultimately faster, and also being better for content creation, would be better to utilize with my board since it can have quad channel? I might have my solution and get the 4x8GB sticks :)
 
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How much more intense on the memory controller would Quad channel be on it? I take it really not much since it optimized to do Quad.
 
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I am getting the NZXT Kraken X61 AIO cooler, So I figured I would be fine with clearance. The case is also the Corsair 750D air flow edition. Wary of the Vengeance stuff, how do you mean? You mean Price wise? it fits into my budget just fine, originally was getting 16GB of ram but upping to 32GB just to have it. Plus I like the Blue LED on the Vengeance I linked in the original post as it will fit with my over all theme.
 
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No mate I just meant the physical height of the ram itself could interfere with offset tower coolers - with a water block it doesn't matter .

You'll have no issue with 4 stick quad , 8 stick quad you would probably struggle to run at 3000mhz full speed.
 
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I probably will not get 8 sticks any time soon, I will stick to just a max of 4 atm.
 
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Just a heads up, there are reports that on the X99 chipset people have had wierd compability issues. This is mostly either caused by hard overclocking -> or by filling all RAM slots <-
The speeds that looses support are between 2800MHz and 3200MHz, so check that before buying if you may in future have 8 RAM sticks. Given that you're going with 3000MHz, you may become a victimg of the compability issue once you've filled all RAM slots, so do some reading to avoid the issue :) I only know a brief info on this, but now you're aware of it.
 
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I have been rethinking the motherboard overall, reviews are all over the place regardless of which site I look at. I know the MSI X99A Krait Ed has support for my CPU, and says it supports up to i believe 3200 MHz on the ram, I don't intend to ever fill all 8 Ram slots, if anything I would just replace the ram later and sell the old sticks down the road. The board that I was looking at again had two updates improving the CPU compatibility as well as Memory compatibility. I am just trying to find a decent MoBo that will support my i7 6800K
 
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Was under the impression you already had the board ??

Personally I'd take one of the asrock fatality board s (but they're primarily reddy/orange components on there)

White - the gigabyte ultra gaming (g1) would be first choice if in budget.

Honestly never been a massive MSI fan when it comes to motherboards

The issue with filling all 8 slots & getting speeds above 2666-2800 is fairly common irregardless of board model in all fairness.
 
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No no I haven't gotten the board yet, I am getting my parts slowly but surely, however I know for the majority what I want/to look for, just needing opinions since I haven't dabbled in PC building for a while so I am out of touch I guess haha.

I was looking at this Asrock board https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xJFPxr/asrock-motherboard-x99extreme4 (thoughts?)

I like the boards, the colors are just going to clash with the Blue theme I planned with it. But I might scrap that for a decent board with less issue.

Asrock from what I have seen are fairly good with their boards and such and reviews seem to be higher. I was going to get parts from newegg, however some reviews state issues with getting parts from them apparently.

I dont plan to really fill all 8 slots, but if i need to lower the 3000MHz to lower speeds then it will be fine, however if its only an issue with filling all slots then I would have no real worry at all really.

These boards I was looking at instead of the MSI I chose:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xJFPxr/asrock-motherboard-x99extreme4 ( was leaning towards this for the color scheme)
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/GBjWGX/gigabyte-ga-x99-ultra-gaming-atx-lga2011-3-motherboard-ga-x99-ultra-gaming
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/2cQypg/asrock-motherboard-x99xkiller
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FGPzK8/asrock-x99-taichi-atx-lga2011-3-motherboard-x99-taichi
 
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The gigabyte is the board I was talking about.
The extremes are to me asrock lower end offerings.

That taichi looks a great great board if the colour scheme is acceptable.
Awards everywhere & a great feature set .

If there was an award for the most improved mb manufacturer of the last 2-3 years asrock would win it hands down IMO.
They still make some mundane tosh but their mid-high end offerings are right up there with the big boys now (& normally significantly cheaper)

Probably be my choice out of those to fit the white colour scheme.
 
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So the Taichi https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FGPzK8/asrock-x99-taichi-atx-lga2011-3-motherboard-x99-taichi here?
I like its scheme since its basically the same as the MSI Krait board I was going to use before. I do like how it has wifi as well. Only thing is I need to switch ram from 3000MHz since it doesn't show it supports it. Also with the white if installed blue LED strips it would bounce off the white and probly give it a blue hue as well for the blue color to match the RAM LEDs

Any thoughts on the MSI Gaming Pro carbon X99 Board just looking at it being a newer board compared to the Krait.
 
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It's true this applies to most chipsets, but from what I've understood X99 is the current #1 chipset where this issue is the most apparent (Z170 being #2 but much less).
You won't necessarily need to pull down the bandwidth, as it's more of a compability issue than clockspeed issue, so it only applies to a certain part of the spectrum of all bandwidths. People have reported that once you go above 3000MHz and to 3200MHz it actually starts to work again.

Here's the comment from when I heard about it the first time:
"2400MHz is fine.
2600MHz is fine as long as you only populate half of the slots and tweak the volts slightly (this applies to everything that follows)
2666MHz is a bitch.
2800MHz LOLz
3000MHz stop it, your killing me.
3200MHz... this is the oddity, as it's the most stable after 2600MHz, from what we can see, the multipler clock matches the 2400/2600 stuff which appears to be where the instability is coming from."

So don't worry about picking slower RAM, going up might actually save it instead, at least that's what some suggest.

For me personally (having a somewhat heavy overclock for X99), everything works up to 2666MHz (except 2600, but that one is a bit abnormal bandwidth so no surprise), then with 2800 only one of my RAM sticks are detected by BIOS (and will probably "get lost" a bit into a power-on session causing a bluescreen as this issue involves), and then at 3000MHz it doesn't boot anymore since it can't find the RAM.
As my sticks are 2400MHz XMP sticks, I haven't been able to bump them up to 3200MHz no matter how I try, so I can't confirm it will work, but there should be info on this online.

Anyway, my recommendation motherboard-wise will always be Asus, since they have some really nice extra features such as MemOK (meaning you won't have to remove CMOS everytime your RAM experiments fail), and a hardware CPU voltage cap that has a switch on the board itself that you need to flip to enable extra high voltage.
Though I've heard plenty of positive thougts on ASRock.

Hmm I actually saw now that you originally said that you DON'T plan on getting 8 RAM sticks... my bad :) Though this still applies with heavier overclocking.
 
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Solution


For the Ram, I was going to get these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236137 and the Mother board that i have repicked is the AsRock X99 Taichi ATX so If I tweak the 3000MHz down to 2600MHz I should be fine? Or OC the sticks to 3200? I just need ideal speeds for Content creation such as Editing, Rendering, Animations, etc and then also for gaming. I have heard many good things about ASRock, ASUS I have seen mixed reviews just as I have MSI. And Gigabyte I have seen good things as well.
 
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Once again, you probably won't need to bother about the bandwidth until you start doing heavier overclocks and/or filling most RAM slots :) When you're there (if that happens), just be sure to adjust the bandwidths and other necessary settings as well.
 
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