Is free ram worth the lower speeds
Is free ram worth the lower speeds
I currently use a 9600k on a z390 mb, and 16g of 3200 that I cooked to 3600. A friend gave me his old RAM after an update, and after some trial and error I can get it running at 3000. Is it better to upgrade to 32g on 3000 or keep 16g on 3600? Mostly for gaming on the PC.
Check the memory capacity yourself. Focus on actual performance rather than just speed numbers. The results also depend on how many channels you're using, for instance. If you increased from 2x8GB to 4x8GB, and most components are single-rank, this setup might improve things significantly. It could more than compensate for any slight slowdown you notice. I often kept multiple 2R 3200 modules since they handled heavy bandwidth tasks just as well as a single 1R 3600/4000.
For a 9600K processor, I prefer 32GB of DDR4-3000 over 16GB of DDR4-3600. The i5 9600K doesn’t perform well with memory speeds above DDR4-3000, so you’re probably not sacrificing much. As @porina mentioned, if you already have the RAM installed, just run some tests to compare performance for your needs.