Ram upgrade from 4GB -> 8GB. Advice please.

[Bill Brasky]

When I first built this i5 750 system, I was uninformed and bought a Corsair matched set of 4GB(2GBx2) 1600, 1.65v. Well three times this week, I noticed I was swapping to the hard disk, so I'm going to upgrade to 8GB.

A new matched set of 8GB(4GBx2) is $30 bucks more than an additional 4GB of the Corsair I originally purchased. Using 4 sticks in my mobo (P7P55D) would cause the ram to run in single channel and not dual, increase voltage from 1.5v to 1.65v, and I believe it would increase the command rate to 2T (not sure about that one but I think the timings change in some fashion).

Here is my question: does $30 seem worth the price for those three features? EDIT: I do plan to resell the RAM I currently have so it could be less than $30.

Here are the G.Skill sticks I'm looking at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231416
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EDIT: Turns out, 4 1600 DIMMs aren't even supported by the mobo. :thumbsdown:

 

[bntran02]

I'm not sure I understand. You want to know if having 4 sticks of ram in single channel is better than having 2 stick in dual channel?

First, I may be wrong but I believe your RAM will still run in dual channel as long as your pairs are identical. But the pairs themselves do not have to be identical.

IMO, all ram features are irrelevant as long as you have enough total RAM. There have been tones of articles written on the performance impact of the of ram in the best/worst configurations and the difference between the two is only about 0 - 3%. So regardless if whether or not your system will still run in dual channel I would still prefer to save $30 and go with 4 sticks of ram. As long as you don't exceed 8Gb then you'll never have a problem. In fact, you could just buy an 8GB kit and add it to your current 4Gb to get 12GB. That way you'll definitely never need more ram

 

[RaiderJ]

As cheap as RAM is these days, it'd probably be worth it to buy a 2x4GB set that can run at 1.5V. If that board has 4 slots, then you could always add in more later and get 16GB. Seems odd that it'd cut you down to single channel running 4 DIMMs.

 

[Bill Brasky]

As cheap as RAM is these days, it'd probably be worth it to buy a 2x4GB set that can run at 1.5V. If that board has 4 slots, then you could always add in more later and get 16GB. Seems odd that it'd cut you down to single channel running 4 DIMMs.

I just double checked the user manual, and I feel like a dunce. I confused this Asus motherboard with different system. >.<

Turns out, 4 1600 DIMMs aren't even supported by the mobo. :thumbsdown:

 

[RaiderJ]

I just double checked the user manual, and I feel like a dunce. I confused this Asus motherboard with different system. >.<

Turns out, 4 1600 DIMMs aren't even supported by the mobo. :thumbsdown:

That's not uncommon - having to loosen timings with all banks populated. What bntran says is correct, RAM performance typically is not a practical issue - not having enough, however, is.

BIOS settings might need to be reset to get all 4 sticks running properly - there's way more RAM settings than I'm familiar with, and if they're not set it can cause problems. Might be why 4 sticks is causing them to run in single-channel mode.