Fill RAM in all slots?

Detalikota

New Member
Do I need to fill all the slots with ram for maximum ram usage effectiveness? Or 2-4 slots usually provide maximum capabilities?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
All depends on how much ram you actually need to do the things you need to do. If you don't do anything memory demanding then 8 to 16 gb will be enough.
 

StrangleHold

Moderator
Staff member
It used to be that if you had the same amount of memory, 2 sticks, one in each memory bank/controller were slightly faster then using 4. As in it doesn't take as long to search 1 stick vs. 2.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Depends on the platform. There's actually an article benchmarking slight gains on AM4 ryzen (maybe specific to zen3) by having 4 dimms populated.

I usually just match the quantity of sticks to the channels and buy the highest capacity dimms for future upgradability. This 32GB 2x16G kit from over 3 years ago hasn't had to be upgraded, although I was somewhat tempted to buy more to have all of the slots RGBified :p

 

Pupp

Member
Depends on the motherboard. But usually most motherboards have at least 2 banks, so you only need to have a single bank loaded. Use your motherboard manual to find which slots belong to which bank.
 
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