Comparing a 2 RAM stick setup versus adding 4 x 64GB sticks on a Ryzen system.
Comparing a 2 RAM stick setup versus adding 4 x 64GB sticks on a Ryzen system.
Considering a 64GB upgrade for your DDR4 PNY Anarchy RAM, you should evaluate running multiple modules. Using four sticks is recommended to maximize performance and ensure smooth memory access, especially with the increased space capacity. Running two 32GB sticks is also viable but may limit scalability and speed potential. Since you're using the system for virtual machines, gaming, and future overclocking plans, a four-stick configuration will provide better flexibility and stability.
In most cases where you can use four sticks, you get additional bandwidth and speed, which is especially useful with Ryzen. Unless your setup involves more NUMA nodes, those already provide more channels by default, making four sticks the still better choice
Bandwidth remains limited even with dual-channel setup. Adding more sticks becomes challenging due to the ICM constraints.
4 sticks isnt as good as 2 sticks usually, but in this case there simply arent high frequency 32GB sticks available at all so 4 sticks of 16GB DDR4 3000MHz+ CL16 is better. He's on a dual channel platform, no such benefit.
^^^ I mean for me it isn't lol, but I run HEDT. Going for 4 sticks makes sense because I can still use quad channel while having 4 slots free (on an ATX or larger mobo) in case I need more capacity in future. On mainstream, there's much less reason to go for 4 sticks. In fact in most cases you want to avoid it, as it's harder on the IMC when running higher clocked RAM, and using all your slots in one go means you can't add more later without replacing your kit and then buying a new kit that's at least as big as the old one plus whatever you wanted to add on top. OP, if you'll only need 64GB and don't see yourself going up in future, then just run whichever is the cheapest 2 or 4 stick kit that gets you there. If you need to possibly add more in future, then go for a 2x32GB kit. What are the VMs doing anyways that needs that much RAM though? Also what CPU are you actually running? No. Mainstream just runs it in two sets of dual channel. HEDT from X79 forwards will run 4 sticks in quad channel or 8 sticks in two sets of quad channel. And Intel's latest Xeons will run 6 sticks in hexa channel or 12 sticks in two sets of hexa channel. And X58 would run 3 sticks in triple channel or 6 sticks in two sets of triple channel. All the HEDT options will still run two sticks in dual channel, X58 would run 4 sticks in dual channel, actually losing bandwidth. I don't know if Intel's Xeons would run 4 sticks in quad or drop all the way to dual.