Out of the game for years, little help on a new build - re: 3 dimms vs 4...

[vicks]

So, I've been away from system building/high performance desktops for about 4-5 years (really fun going back in my newegg order history and seeing past builds...anyways)

Pertinent specs for this issue:

Z77 chipset
i2700k

...

My question, I purchased a triple channel set of ram - not knowing full well triple channel has come and gone (at least on this chipset/board)

(here is the set of ram I have - http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengea...5291793&sr=8-1)

If the performance hit isnt much, I'm certainly fine running them single channel - my question is - is there much of a hit? Otherwise, since I cannot find similar ram clocked at that speed (another 4 gig stick) - would it be advisable to purchase this (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengea...5291347&sr=8-1) and try to adjust the one stick or the 3 sticks to have similar timings/clock speed and run 2 sets of dual channel? (thats a possibility, right? - again, its been awhile... )

Anyways, so incredibly excited for the components to arrive...I snagged a GTX 680 off of Amazon thanks to NowInStock.net...really excited to be putting together another system this weekend...its been far too long...

Thanks for the help!

Adam.

 

[Golgatha]

You'll want to buy that 4th stick of RAM for dual channel operation. Single channel operation isn't advisable. Alternatively you could just run 8GB of RAM and still run dual channel.

 

[vicks]

Ordered the stick, im ok with toning down the 12 gigs I got previously if need be (heard that may need to happen anyways for stability issues) in order to run optimal dual channel. Lesson learned.

thanks for the help!

Adam.

 

[NP Complete]

Hate to say it (because it looks like it may be too late), but dual channel operations looks to only add ~5% performance at most. In most benchmarks, it adds even less, with performance benefits in most games less than 1%. You'd probably be looking at a larger boost from file caching with more memory than from moving from single channel to dual channel operation.

Of course, all the benchmarks I found were for Core 2's, so perhaps the performance increase will be higher on an i7, but I doubt it will be all that high for most applications.

General rule of thumb is more RAM is more better than more channels.

Of course, more channels and more RAM is the best of all! As long as you can afford it, why not buy more RAM?

 

[vicks]

Sitting at around $2000 plus or minus without a monitor yet, what's another 25 bucks for piece of mind and e-ego...

 

[NP Complete]

Too true. $2000 should set you up with a very nice setup - I'm a bit jealous.

But, then again, I don't think I have anything that I play or do professionally that would benefit all that much from such an awesome computer.

 

[vicks]

Neither do I really, but I missed a good 5 years of builds and upgrades, I consider it saving up to this new build. I do game enough to where this should hold me over for a couple years... But again, who am I kidding..