Question Very basic Question about 32 vs 64 GB RAM

[Caveman]

Currently building a RIG with the following core components:

1) ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WiFi Socket AM5 (LGA 1718) Ryzen 7000 gaming motherboard(16 + 2 power stages, DDR5, 4x M.2 slots, PCIe® 5.0, WiFi 6E, 2.5G LAN, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C® rear I/O port, Aura Sync RGBc)

2) AMD Zen 4 7700X 5th Gen 8-core, 16-threads

3) 4090 FE

4) CORSAIR Vengeance RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600 (PC5 44800) Desktop Memory Model CMH32GX5M2B5600Z36K
16-16-16-76 CAS 36

After reading around, I'm not convinced that adding another 2 x 16GB of RAM will make this new build faster or slower and if 2 x 32 GB would have been better for a 64GB goal. I remember that AMD DDR4 had specific configs that worked better than others but haven't found any clear direction for DDR5. Can someone help or point me to some resources that are eaasy to understand and confident in their assessment? i.e. 2 banks of 2 x 16 is better than 1 bank for 2 x 32, etc... Benchmarks would be nice.

Steve from Gamers Nexus had a perfect video. Wondering if these rules still hold for new AMD series...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Nah. DDR5 memory controller is far worse with 4 sticks, AFAIK. 64GB with 4 sticks *MAY* be OK but forget 128GB at a decent speed.

 

[lopri]

Joined in 1999 and you are asking whether 64GB will make your system run faster than 32GB?

 

[lopri]

Right now ALL DDR5 16GB sticks are single-rank sticks and ALL 32GB sticks are all dual-ranks, if that is what you are asking.

 

[kschendel]

The problem with that gamersnexus video is that (AFAIK) they never tested a dual rank 2x16 against their 4x8 setup. Their gains were from dual ranking, not 4 sticks.

You don't want to try to run 4 sticks of DDR5 with current memory controllers.

Adding memory only helps if you actually need it, and then it's essential. You can do an awful lot in 32 GB.

 

[sdifox]

About the only people that need lots of ram are CAD, photo editing and DAW pros. You'll be fine with 32gb. Paging to NVME should not be noticeable.

 

[igor_kavinski]

About the only people that need lots of ram are CAD, photo editing and DAW pros.

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube? I see one video and then there are dozens of more interesting recommendations on the right side scrolling list and opening any one of them results in dozen more videos I wanna see. Last time I ended up opening 70+ tabs and I had to stop coz it was time to sleep!

 

[sdifox]

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube? I see one video and then there are dozens of more interesting recommendations on the right side scrolling list and opening any one of them results in dozen more videos I wanna see. Last time I ended up opening 70+ tabs and I had to stop coz it was time to sleep!

ok whatever.

 

[In2Photos]

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube? I see one video and then there are dozens of more interesting recommendations on the right side scrolling list and opening any one of them results in dozen more videos I wanna see. Last time I ended up opening 70+ tabs and I had to stop coz it was time to sleep!

Copy the links to a notepad page. RAM usage solved.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Barring very specific use cases time after time more memory is better than faster memory.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Copy the links to a notepad page. RAM usage solved.

Too much work!

 

[In2Photos]

Too much work!

🤦‍♂️

 

[Caveman]

Joined in 1999 and you are asking whether 64GB will make your system run faster than 32GB?

Right now ALL DDR5 16GB sticks are single-rank sticks and ALL 32GB sticks are all dual-ranks, if that is what you are asking.

I lol'd at the 1999 comment. So... I'm a degreed Mechanical Engineer so I understand a thing or 2 about specs, etc... I built my first rig about 20 ears ago and understand enough to know there may be peculiarities with the various generations (i.e. DDR5) which is why I asked. I build a new rig every 5 years or so and come back to AT for help. I read all the forums for about 40-80 hrs and glean all I can and learning all the new jargon, etc... before taking the plunge -- and in this case, I came up short on the RAM usage for the new AMD architecture using DDR5.

My use case is flight simulation (DCS, IL-2, FS2020) and in DCS 64 GB of RAM is the sweet spot. I may also use this rig for CAD work. Bottom line from what I gathered is that I should be using 2 sticks of dual rank 32GB instead of 4 sticks of single rank. I thought I was purchasing 2 sticks of dual rank per PN: CMH32GX5M2B5600Z36K

I was hoping to snag another pack of 2X 16 and call it a day but thins thread seems to be screaming "NO!!! If you want 64, get two sticks of 32!" Am I understanding this right? All of this seems to be very tribal-knowledge like... Not sure how people are just supposed to magically know that if you want 64 its 2 banks of 32 and not 4 banks of 16...

 

[tcsenter]

Don't overestimate the benefit of frequencies, timings, banks and rranks at this level. If your apps aren't going to utilize the extra RAM, you're blowing money. More RAM is always better than 'faster' RAM (in the same system).

 

[kschendel]

I was hoping to snag another pack of 2X 16 and call it a day but thins thread seems to be screaming "NO!!! If you want 64, get two sticks of 32!" Am I understanding this right? All of this seems to be very tribal-knowledge like... Not sure how people are just supposed to magically know that if you want 64 its 2 banks of 32 and not 4 banks of 16...

2 vs 4 depends a lot on the memory controller built into the CPU. It also depends to a certain extent on the motherboard: trace quality, routing, shielding, BIOS timing setup. 4 sticks is a more difficult load to drive, electrically.

For DDR4, Intel CPU's up to 11th gen have robust memory controllers and seem quite happy with 4 sticks. 12/13th gen, I've heard conflicting stories. The first 2 Ryzen generations did not care for 4 sticks at all; Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000) is kind of hit or miss, and Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) is mostly OK with pushing 4 sticks.

Current DDR5 memory controllers don't like 4 sticks AT ALL from what I hear; you need to drastically drop transfer rates to get them to work, whether Intel or AMD. For your DDR5 setup I would definitely advocate sticking to 2 sticks even if it means replacing/selling what you have. Of course, if you have a dire immediate need for 64GB and are money constrained, 64GB at a reduced speed may well be better than nothing.

 

[kschendel]

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube?...

I personally find YouTube easy to resist, period. When I do need to sit through a video, I'm typically looking for something specific, e.g. some sort of How To video. Aside from that, it's mostly blather. These days, it seems like one 20-minute video is worth maybe 500 words at most.

As for rabbit-hole surfing, after 6 or 7 deep I'm never going to find my way back anyway. I know there are people who open dozens of tabs, but I just don't get it.

 

[Super Spartan]

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube? I see one video and then there are dozens of more interesting recommendations on the right side scrolling list and opening any one of them results in dozen more videos I wanna see. Last time I ended up opening 70+ tabs and I had to stop coz it was time to sleep!

you do know that YouTube has a magical button on each video called "watch later" that when you click, adds that video to your Watch Later list which you can go through later and watch everything that caught your interest.

 

[igor_kavinski]

you do know that YouTube has a magical button on each video called "watch later" that when you click, adds that video to your Watch Later list which you can go through later and watch everything that caught your interest.

I don't know if that has a limit. I do that on every video I like when I watch on my mobile but if I encounter the same video again, I still see the Save button (which from a UI point of view, says to me that it's no longer in my watch list).

 

[Super Spartan]

I don't know if that has a limit. I do that on every video I like when I watch on my mobile but if I encounter the same video again, I still see the Save button (which from a UI point of view, says to me that it's no longer in my watch list).

No limit, I have like 150 videos to watch. Also, you can set up multiple locations, by default, there is only WATCH LATER, but when you see a video, you can click on the 3 vertical dots on the bottom right of the video then choose add to playlist and create a playlist if you don't have any.

For example, general videos I wanna watch later, I just hit add to watch later, on every video if you hover over it, there is little icon on the top right to quickly add it to the watch later list. On the other hand, if it's a video about gym exercises, I add it to a playlist called "Training". I do the same for songs, sleep music, etc.

Those items remain in those lists until you manually remove them. so like when I want to sleep sometimes I just open the playlist of Sleep music and turn it on, then all the sleep music videos are played.

 

[HardWarrior]

You are forgetting internet browsing people, which is just about everyone. How do you resist not opening tabs on Youtube? I see one video and then there are dozens of more interesting recommendations on the right side scrolling list and opening any one of them results in dozen more videos I wanna see. Last time I ended up opening 70+ tabs and I had to stop coz it was time to sleep!

As far as YT content, it's long since become easy to see just the content I'm interested in seeing. Without TOO much prompting the AL will try to match what seems to interest you. Subscribing quickly creates a long list of content as well.

 

[Harry_Wild]

The speed of the DDR5 will be more important for speed then the amount of RAM installed. 2660 vs. 6600, big difference in quickness!

 

[kschendel]

The speed of the DDR5 will be more important for speed then the amount of RAM installed. 2660 vs. 6600, big difference in quickness!

This isn't always true, I'm afraid.

Performance related to RAM capacity is basically a step function. When you have enough memory, adding more doesn't do much. (I'm ignoring file data caching effects, which can be significant, but are extremely workload dependent.) When you don't have enough memory and start paging, performance rapidly becomes dire.

Once you have enough memory, and only then, does memory speed make a difference. And again, depending on workload - cache hit rates this time -- speed might matter a lot, or hardly at all.

 

[Harry_Wild]

This isn't always true, I'm afraid.

Performance related to RAM capacity is basically a step function. When you have enough memory, adding more doesn't do much. (I'm ignoring file data caching effects, which can be significant, but are extremely workload dependent.) When you don't have enough memory and start paging, performance rapidly becomes dire.

Once you have enough memory, and only then, does memory speed make a difference. And again, depending on workload - cache hit rates this time -- speed might matter a lot, or hardly at all.

32GB is enough for 95% of all normal applications(excluding scientific, complex mathematics, database, graphics image rendering,etc…).

 

[Turbonium]

Wait, so what's "better", single-rank or dual-rank sticks?

And do the latest IMCs have problems with only 2 sticks of either of the above? I'm confused.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm confused.

Short answer: just get 2x16GB and you are good.