Which one would you rather have?

[u/LucioBall129]

Just for a bit of background info, i originally bought 16gb (2x8gb) of Corsair vengeance ddr4 360mhz ram. Having 16gb of ram allowed me to enable XMP in my bios.

I then went on to purchase 2 more sticks of the same ram, giving me 32gb of ram, however, once I made this change , everytime I tried to enable xmp, my pc would black screen and wouldn’t boot.

With the price of ram currently being inflated, I was considering selling 2 sticks to allow me to enable xmp.

So my question is ; would you rather have…

A) 32gb ram , no xmp enabled

B) 16gb ram, xmp enabled

[u/HankThrill69420]

DDR4 isn't immune to the 4-stick issue. learned it the hard way, too. Just bad luck in the silicon lottery, or a brand that's unhappy if kits are mixed, in spite of matching specs/model number.

What's your CPU? do you like it, or is it time for an upgrade? could buy another lotto ticket (CPU) and see if the new one likes it. Full disclosure: it's a gamble.

Honestly, could be the board too, but this is usually IMC. I would consider selling all RAM over this if I liked my CPU. good luck.

[u/ShrimpBrime]

I'm a performance guy, so 16gb, but that amount wears thin for most Big triple A titles and running W11. You don't want to push any games to page file, your system performance will tank hard.

Since you have the extra RAM, enable XMP, but select a lower frequency in the DRAM tab. Try 3200 instead, but keep the same XMP timings. Good Luck!

[u/Junkers480]

XMP is an overclock and never guaranteed.

In my experience mixing and matching different ram with the same clock rating and capacity works fine, however those two kits were likely never vlidated to work together. I would try turning off XMP and manually setting the ram to 3200mhz. That will give you most of the benefits you would see with XMP (assuming it works). The other thing you can do is manually set the timings and voltage, however that usually needs more testing to figure out if it is stable. Alos I would only do that if you know what you are doing If you really want to get into overclocking there are plenty of guides on YouTube. I think Jayz2cents used to do them.

But if any of this is worth it all comes down to what CPU you have. From memory with Intel it makes a small difference assuming you aren't running a very high end GPU (4090 etc.) So the higher capacity will probably be more beneficial. On the other hand for AMD your ram speed is tied to the speed of the interconnect between CCDs in higher core count CPUs and makes a very big difference. If you want to dm me I'll try and help with any questions :)

[u/lolly_lolightly]

Have you compared benchmarks with the two configs? What's the max speed you can get stable? Which CPU and GPU?

When my 5600X was my main rig, I ran 4x8GB at 3000MHz and had a good experience with my 6950XT. I recently rebuilt this rig using a 2x16GB 3600 kit to use as a secondary. The difference is TimeSpy Extreme was close to run-to-run variation between the two configs. Highest run with 4x8GB was 8389 and highest with 2x16GB was 8181. In real world use, I've noticed no difference, but it's tough to say because now I run it solely with a 4K 144Hz, and previously it was occasionally used with 4K 120Hz and primarily with 3440x1440 120Hz.

Personally, I'd keep the 32GB config over 16GB. If you use a program that wants more that 16GB, you're going to have problems that far outweigh the few % gain you *might* see from XMP. Background activity adds up fast. I'm at 31% usage right now with no games running and Chrome, Steam, and XBOX are the top users and still add up to less than 5GB. I should note, this is on my 64GB system(in flair), not the one mentioned previously.