X570 2 or 4 sticks of RAM

Nasgul said:

I used 4 sticks 2x G.Skill and 2x Team back in my Q6600, ran overclocked for 7 years, except the G.Skill was downgraded because the Team sticks had slower timings, nevertheless, it worked fine.
.
Now I have 4 Dominator Platinum sticks, 32GB total and I'm yet to have issues with my system, and I've cracked my 10700KF to 5.2GHz. So.............God knows where that "MYTH" came from.
.
And there's the pic with the 4 sticks............it works fantastic. Then again, my system is not known for being one of the most problematic platforms to have issues with RAM in general. I tend to go that way all the time.

Click to expand...

The reason two sticks are generally better is because most motherboards only support a dual channel configuration, and generally the ideal configuration is one stick per channel. So if you have a dual channel configuration, usually having one stick on each channel should allow you to reach the best speed. It really depends on how they design the board, though. Most boards should be able to run four sticks, especially if you stick to the motherboard's recommended RAM speed and buy all four sticks as part of a single kit so you know all the RAM is the same type. The one thing you REALLY don't want to do is run just a single stick of RAM on a board that can do dual channel. Like just putting a single 16GB stick in to get 16GB of RAM. That would be worse than four sticks of RAM for sure, because then you drop down to single channel.

The game changes a lot if you have, say, quad channel memory. If you have four channels, then anything less than four sticks of RAM is sub-optimal, and you will probably have eight RAM slots on the board anyway. So that advice is very conditional on the assumption that you only have two channels, the board is designed in a way that two slots are favored, and you might be overclocking the RAM. If any of those assumptions don't hold true, then things change.

Shadowarez said:

ahh see that makes more sence lol, though i dont see any point in downsizing to say 2x32gb sticks as i can use the ram i have to fullest extent, would it really be that noticeable in say video rendering/coding occasional gaming? or will this kill the imc on cpu over time since it's more stress on the imc of the ccx's?

Gadfly said:

Interesting, but honestly with the changes coming to fclk in the next agesa core, it is premature to make any recommendations on memory. 3600 is very slow by modern standards when more CPU's hit 2000mhz, or even 2100mhz fclk, 3600C16 is leaving a lot of performance on the table.

Also, could you post a "Zentimings" screenshot of your tuned memory profile and tell us at what voltage you are running? That would be very helpful in determining how "tuned" the sub-timings are.

For example, Is this a mildly tuned profile like you find in the Ryzen dram calc running moderate voltages (1.45ish), or is this a really tight tune running 1.7v?

Without that context of what you consider to be very tight sub timings it is hard to judge how insightful this article really is.

Click to expand...

I think that is a fantastic idea to add Zen timing + voltage for the tuned setups if there is a future update on this article.

This is what I'm running for 3200CL14 + Dram Fast Profile.

 

Great article but I'm a little confused...

So dual rank setups provide better results for CPU and memory intensive scenarios. Which would suggest that 4x8GB single rank memory sticks is the way to go, since it would operate as dual rank, but at the end Steve recommends 2x8Gb (which are single rank sticks from what I found online). In the beginning of the article he states that two single rank sticks will always operate as single rank.

I get it that 16GB in total should suffice but that is beyond the scope. I also understand that at higher resolutions (1440p) which is what I'll be doing see a smaller difference. Is that why the 2 single rank 8GB sticks are being recommended?

I'm undecided if 2x16Gb (dual rank sticks) or 4x8Gb (single rank sticks) are the way to go. 2x16 would be nice as I could expand in the future but would adding an extra 2x16 to that 64 running as dual rank or quad rank?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks a million.

---------------------------------------------

My current planned setup is:

MSI Tomahawk x570
AMD Ryzen 5600x
Kraken X63
M.2 Samsung 970 Evo 1tb
RAM is a big ?????

 

lukaspechar said:

Great article but I'm a little confused...

So dual rank setups provide better results for CPU and memory intensive scenarios. Which would suggest that 4x8GB single rank memory sticks is the way to go, since it would operate as dual rank, but at the end Steve recommends 2x8Gb (which are single rank sticks from what I found online). In the beginning of the article he states that two single rank sticks will always operate as single rank.

I get it that 16GB in total should suffice but that is beyond the scope. I also understand that at higher resolutions (1440p) which is what I'll be doing see a smaller difference. Is that why the 2 single rank 8GB sticks are being recommended?

I'm undecided if 2x16Gb (dual rank sticks) or 4x8Gb (single rank sticks) are the way to go. 2x16 would be nice as I could expand in the future but would adding an extra 2x16 to that 64 running as dual rank or quad rank?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks a million.

---------------------------------------------

My current planned setup is:

MSI Tomahawk x570
AMD Ryzen 5600x
Kraken X63
M.2 Samsung 970 Evo 1tb
RAM is a big ?????

Click to expand...

They do not support Quad channel. Go for 2x16GB to get dual rank memory as most are.

 

lukaspechar said:

Thanks for your answer, however am I understanding this correctly?

• 2 single rank sticks = single rank
• 4 single rank sticks = dual rank
• 2 dual rank sticks = dual rank
• 4 dual rank sticks = dual rank (or is this quad rank??)

I know The MSI Tomahawk x570 doesn't support quad channel so I would gain no benefit if it is quad rank but is it quad rank if I use 4 dual rank sticks or does it remain dual rank?

Given your suggestion to go with 2x16GB I would imagine you are allowing future expansion with an extra 2x16 GB sticks? Is that the thinking behind your answer?
Many thanks

Click to expand...

Don't over think it. Today's 16GB sticks are mostly dual rank so stick with 2 of those to be safe. A lot depends on individual motherboards and other factors like the article says...then yes you can upgrade later if desired and you will get either dual rank or quad rank but it still won't be quad channel.

 

Is it better to have 2 or 4 sticks of RAM Ryzen?

As discussed in extensive detail in Jerry's Ryzen 5000 Series review, 4 sticks of RAM consistently gave better results on Ryzen 5000 CPUs than 2 sticks of RAM.

How many RAM slots does X570 support?

It has four memory slots for up to 128GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM, which can run up to 4400 MHz when overclocked.

Should I use all 4 RAM slots?

If you have three RAM sticks, you should use the three slots furthest away from the CPU socket. If you have four RAM sticks and a four-slot motherboard, then you can just populate all four slots with all four RAM sticks.

What RAM is best for X570 motherboard?

We noted in our Ryzen 5000 RAM Guide that the sweet spot for memory performance on X570 is DDR 3600.