Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:34 pm
just brew it! wrote:thecoldanddarkone wrote:I suggest getting 8 gigs like the other's are saying. It's hard to say if your going to be able to get all 4 slots stable depending the setup since the modules are going to be different.
It should be possible to get them stable, but there's a fair chance the RAM will need to be underclocked and/or the timings loosened to get there, especially if all of the DIMMs are double-sided. The mobo might be able to sort things out by itself (I've had a couple of Asus mobos that automatically downclock the RAM if you use Auto timings with all 4 slots filled), but this is by no means guaranteed.
OP will probably need to decide whether 12 GB vs. 8 GB is worth a small drop in memory bandwidth. If he's not running stuff that will use more than 8 GB then going for 8 GB at tighter timings might be a net win over 12 GB at looser timings and/or lower clock speed. But even if apps aren't filling 8 GB the extra 4 GB will still get used as file system cache which should improve system responsiveness, so the choice is far from clear even in that case.
Don't get me wrong I agree with you, but i've had situations where no matter how much voltage or clocks I wasn't able to get the ram to play nice together. I will say most of the time it's the "premium" sticks I've had the problem with.
I7 4930k, 32 GB Ballistix DDRL3@2133 , 1.2 TB Intel 750 AIC, 500 GB mx200, Sapphire R9 Fury, asus x79 ws, HP ZR24w, edifier s730
HP Pro x2 612- i5-4302Y, 8 gigs of memory, 256 ssd