When building a new PC, it hits in the head; how should I use RAM channels?
Or it can be that upgrading your PC, and you get stuck about how to upgrade the RAMs.
You might want to hear my opinion about RAMs as a full-time gamer.
A very common question is,
Which RAM Channels to use?
What Are Single, Dual, And Quad Channel Configuration?
You might also know it to be RAM slots.
The more slots your motherboard has, the more RAM you’re able to install.
Your motherboard might have DIMM slots starting from one to eight slots.
So having a single DIMM means you are running a single-channel and true for others, maybe?
Probably right, but not all the time.
You might have 4 RAM sticks in your motherboard but still, it might be running in dual channel.
Some CPUs support quad-channel memory, while other supports only dual channel.
How To Enable Dual Channel RAM?
So, two RAMs communicate with the CPU, simultaneously improving the systems performance.
In a sense, the dual-channel mode runs two RAM modules together to be more optimized.
If excessive load is given upon the CPU, it tends to overheat, resulting in reduced performance.
So there should be at least two different colored DIMM slots in 4 DIMM slot motherboards.
Putting the same size and speed of RAM in the same colored slots will automatically enable dual-channel.
Again, dont get confused if you dont see any colors on your motherboard.
Look out for markings beside the slots, as companies sometimes tend to make the motherboard to their liking.
For example, there might be markings saying A1, A2, B1, B2.
However, installing the sticks in A1 and A2 will make them work in single channel mode.
To keep in mind, different manufacturers may change the dual channel slots in other combinations.
In the software, under the Memory section, you will find Channel.
How to Enable Quad Channel RAM?
A quad-channel mode should work better than a dual-channel as it enables four RAM sticks to work together effectively.
Despite that, the performance increase in quad-channel is very marginal compared to dual-channel memory.
Except you are running memory-hungry programs.
Manymotherboardscome with 4 DIMM slots, and higher-end motherboards even come with 8.
So before buying a motherboard, you oughta ensure that the motherboard supports quad-channel RAM.
To begin with, not every processor supports quad-channel.
However, for Intel, it is very messy.
Even all Xeon CPUs dont support quad-channel.
For Core CPUs, there are hands full that support quad-channel.
For instance, the Intel Core i7-9800X, Core i9-7900X, and Core i7-7820X support quad-channel.
Why Go Multi-Channel?
As we have seen previously, running dual-channel or quad-channel enables better communication and achieves bigger bandwidth.
It increases the systems data transfer rate between memory and processor.
Dual-channel or quad-channel offers a slight increase in 2-3 FPS in gaming which is relatively insignificant.
But for other tasks such as editing, it will significantly impact performance.
Whether you run multi-channel or single-channel is totally up to you.
Hope you learned something from the article.
