8 RAM sticks with a dual channel CPU??

cbates · 9 Jul 2021 at 21:13

Hi all,

I'm looking at upgrade options for my PC and I'm wondering whether a RAM upgrade will be of any benefit to me. At the moment, I currently have;

Ryzen 5900x CPU
4x8GB G Skill Trident Neo 3600Mhz CL14 RAM
MSI X570 Gaming Plus Motherboard
RTX 3080

What I'm thinking of doing is upgrading the motherboard to one which has 8 slots for DDR4 RAM and then doubling the RAM I have with the exact same sticks and specs. The idea is that the additional RAM will provide an increased performance when gaming but I have a few questions based on whether this is a logical idea.

Can the Ryzen 5900x CPU (which only supports dual channel mode) utilise 8 sticks of RAM?
If it can, what benefit could be gained from this? Can a single application such as a game use more than 2 sticks of RAM at once even when the CPU is limited to dual channel mode?

Thanks in advance!

mickyflinn · 9 Jul 2021 at 21:23

You cant get a x570 motherboard with 8 ram slots for the 5900x you would need to change to threadripper cpu and trx4 motherboard to get quad channel memory.

Minstadave · 9 Jul 2021 at 21:23

I don't think there is an 8 slot board for AM4 is there?

Aside from that you don't need that much RAM for gaming. You only really need 2x16GB modules, 4x16GB if you want total overkill.

chroniclard · 9 Jul 2021 at 21:25

Waste of time for gaming.

cbates · 9 Jul 2021 at 22:02

At the moment I have 4x8GB, would there be any benefit in changing to either 4x16GB (overkill I know) or even a 2x8GB and 2x16GB if only dual channel is supported?

cbates · 9 Jul 2021 at 22:04

Disclaimer: I've recently moved to PC from console so talk to me like a child if needed

Minstadave · 9 Jul 2021 at 22:25

You'd be fine running what you've got. 32GB is plenty for gaming currently. A single application can use the whole amount of RAM, dual channel doesn't limit it to half.

mickyflinn · 9 Jul 2021 at 22:31

cbates said:
At the moment I have 4x8GB, would there be any benefit in changing to either 4x16GB (overkill I know) or even a 2x8GB and 2x16GB if only dual channel is supported?

No point for gaming stick with what you have, dont waste your money.

cbates · 9 Jul 2021 at 23:14

Thanks for the feedback, as I mentioned I'm a little inexperienced with PC components so it really helps.

I don't consider my build to be lacking in performance when gaming but out of curiosity I'd like to know my upgrade options in the future (as a performance greedy gamer!). Given the specs I mentioned in the original post, where do you think the next reasonable upgrade would be? I appreciate it might not even be in the current generation of hardware but from what has been said in here and other posts, I would think the only logical option would be the GPU - does that seem sensible at all?

Minstadave · 9 Jul 2021 at 23:24

What resolution will you be gaming at.

cbates · 9 Jul 2021 at 23:35

2560x1440, I'd consider a jump to 4k or ultrawide but usually I play online/multiplayer/competitive games which is why I'm at 1440p just now - imo it's a sweet spot between graphics and performance, especially with the hardware I currently have

Minstadave · 10 Jul 2021 at 08:40

cbates said:
2560x1440, I'd consider a jump to 4k or ultrawide but usually I play online/multiplayer/competitive games which is why I'm at 1440p just now - imo it's a sweet spot between graphics and performance, especially with the hardware I currently have

Yeah its likely GPU will be your bottleneck with future games.

cbates · 10 Jul 2021 at 15:40

Thanks all, appreciate the comments

chroniclard · 10 Jul 2021 at 15:55

Best bet would be to tune the memory. Tighter timings and/or faster speed.

cbates · 10 Jul 2021 at 16:02

I've actually been trying this the past couple of days but when I raise the RAM speed in the BIOS options it prevents the system from booting up - I need to remove the CMOS battery to get it working again. I've seen examples online where someone managed to achieve a stable overclock of 4000MHz with the RAM I have so I've tried both 4000MHz and 3800MHz, both give the same issue.

The motherboard supports speeds up to 4400MHz so that shouldn't be causing the problems, any ideas what it could be or what I need to change?

EsaT · 10 Jul 2021 at 16:35

Achievable memory speeds depend mostly on CPU, because that's where memory controller is.
In case of Ryzen 3800Mhz would be already really good needing good amount of knowledge/understanding to achieve.
And getting CPU's internal Infinity Fabric bus to go higher than that demands really good CPU individual:
If you need to decouple clocks of IF and memory controller, notable latency penalty from that hits especially gaming performance.

If you can run those DIMMs at XMP settings, with your level of knowledge would recommend leaving it to that.
Dual rank 3600MHz CL14 would be anyway one of the fastest combinations without major amount of work in tweaking settings and testing stability.