RAM - 2x2GB or 4x1GB?

Kaylya · Post by **Kaylya** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:14 am

Is there a difference from a power consumption and/or cooling perspective whether RAM is in the form of 2x2GB or 4x1GB?

Which would you go with?

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:24 am

Not because of power reasons, but because of reliability reasons I would stay away from 4 sticks of RAM. Some motherboards may have 4 slots, but may not work, or be very marginal when trying to use all four.

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:50 am

Wouldn't two sticks be faster because it runs in dual channel mode?

Elvellon · Post by **Elvellon** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:22 am

Each channel has 2 slots.

I'd go for 4 sticks only in a pre-built (read: pre-tested) PC.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:24 am

I heard two sticks has more change of being able to run on 1T timing and that nobody got four sticks to do that, all at 2T.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:38 am

Kaylya wrote:Is there a difference from a power consumption and/or cooling perspective whether RAM is in the form of 2x2GB or 4x1GB?

Which would you go with?

People here tend to say the number of sticks don't vary much in power consumption with capacity so 2*2gb would be less power. 2gb sticks likelier to be made on a smaller process I would suppose.
I'd definitely go with 2*2gb.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:09 am

I would go for 2x2gb, it leaves room for upgrading in the future. Money wise it shouldn't make a big difference.

Kaylya · Post by **Kaylya** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:16 pm

So to update my question:

I believe with an AMD 5200+ I'd want PC2-6400 RAM, is that correct? Or do I want the PC2-5300 stuff?

Assuming I don't intend to overclock, undervolt, etc., does it really matter what RAM I buy?

Like, on the website I'm looking at, I see:
G.Skill Extreme F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Kit
2x 2048MB, DDRII-800, CAS 5-5-5-15, 1.8V ~ 1.9V

G.Skill Extreme F2-6400CL6D-4GBMQ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Kit
2x 2048MB, DDRII-800, CAS 6-6-6-18, 1.8V ~ 1.9V

Should I care about the difference between those two other than that the first is $10 cheaper? (Or other RAM with different CAS (timings?)?)

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:03 pm

Kaylya wrote:So to update my question:

I believe with an AMD 5200+ I'd want PC2-6400 RAM, is that correct? Or do I want the PC2-5300 stuff?

Assuming I don't intend to overclock, undervolt, etc., does it really matter what RAM I buy?

Like, on the website I'm looking at, I see:
G.Skill Extreme F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Kit
2x 2048MB, DDRII-800, CAS 5-5-5-15, 1.8V ~ 1.9V

G.Skill Extreme F2-6400CL6D-4GBMQ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Kit
2x 2048MB, DDRII-800, CAS 6-6-6-18, 1.8V ~ 1.9V

Should I care about the difference between those two other than that the first is $10 cheaper? (Or other RAM with different CAS (timings?)?)

Ideally a 5200+ will work best with PC6400 if the CPU is slightly overclocked to 2.8 GHz:
2800 MHz / 7 = 400 MHz (DDR800 = PC6400).

With stock clock speed:
2600 MHz / 7 = 371 MHz (DDR2-742)
I've overclocked to 2.8 GHz, no noticable temperature increase and no need to change stock voltage, because this is a very gentle overclock.

If the first is cheaper than the second RAM, I'd go for the first one: cheaper and faster RAM.

RAM - 2x2GB or 4x1GB?

RAM - 2x2GB or 4x1GB?

Re: RAM - 2x2GB or 4x1GB?