Is there a strong benefit in getting one 2x16 gb ram kit instead of two 2x8 gb ones?

Usually 1 kit of 2x16GB is preferable, because most mainboards are dual-channel anyway and you have the option to upgrade to 4x16GB later, if you have 4 slots.

Free slots for expansion as devs get lazier and Chrome proliferates.

@PonySlaystation sounds reasonable regarding channels

@lorentz i've meant other than free slots. basically i'm upgrading my PC part by part and for the newer CPU faster ram is preferable (ryzen zen3), while i have a 4x8 2400mhz kit now. went to the online store and saw the 2x16 kit right away, so was wondering whether it would be better to get that one. i am not really starved on ram with 32 gigs total, so the free slots aren't a strong priority

depends on your use case, and future expantion plan.
Board max is 32gb, and the 4x8 is cheaper? no question.
board max is 64+? plan to expand in the future? 2x16 it is.

Gaming Performance - it really depends on the kits details, cost, and mobo configuration.
If you are not a gamer, get the cheap kits that has lifetime warrenty.

@iiii Hz is only one side of the coin. Mind the CLs as well. High-freq-low-CL DIMMs are expensive. Whereas high-freq-high-CL ones are cheap. But I doubt they perform as well as you may expect by judging freq alone.

@magicMirror well, the only gaming I do that really depends on such performance is switch emulation.

@netikras 16-18-18 sounds quite low as CL goes 🤔 for a 3200 mhz one

@lorentz btw, I don't use chrome

Potential benefits:

- Free slots might be filled with moar RAM later

- less components means less things that can break

- RAM kits are supposed to contain sticks that have closely matching timings. If you get two kits, timings of the contained sticks might differ more (mark the sticks by kit and install sticks of the same kit in the same channel for best overclockability).

- There is a (small) base cost per stick - so price might be lower for kits with same capacity but less sticks. The effect might be the opposite for higher capacity sticks which are made of more complex ram chips.

- More sticks require more power. It aint much (a few Watts) - but it increases the desktop-idle power consumption (and therefore heat generation).

While all these benefits normally don't really matter much, i would suggest going for the larger kit if the price difference to the two smaller kits isn't big. Just don't forget to move the old sticks into the same channel when adding the new ones later.

@Oktokolo I am going to fully replace old sticks with new ones without mixing the speed. And old sticks will go on another build as a handdown

Four sticks can be faster but it depends. It's especially so if you buy single rank memory. But it's also possible that your memory controller can't run four sticks as fast as two. https://youtu.be/AGux0pANft0

@electrineer thanks for the link

If i would have to choose, 2 RAM modules a 8 GiB for a total of 16 GiB but with ECC (assuming you need it for work).

Here is why: 16 GiB is already a lot. Why do you need more? Do you have specific use cases that need so much RAM?

If possible, i would always ECC for anything that i use for work. Well, if you only game and watch movies, ECC doesn't matter but i don't want to introduce bit flips nobody notice till it is so late nobody knows where the problem came from.

@happygimp0 I fail to see why I would need an ECC memory even for work. My work PC is not a server

@iiii Without ECC you can get silent bitflips. They may change something without you noticing and break something down the line and with a high cost. Imagine production data getting changed, you order a batch of 1000, and they turn out to be unusable (because you had a bitflip). Not likely but well worth the small investment for ECC RAM. Other, more likely but less server scenario is a bitflip messing up your SSD or HDD. Most likely you notice it thanks to checksum, but you have to recover what takes time and may lose some work.

It is completely irrelevant if you use a server or not. A server for hosting games doesn't need ECC, despite being a server.

@happygimp0 I don't get the use case at which I would need that

@iiii I was referring to Electron

@lorentz oh, now I get it. But I prefer to not use that as well.

@happygimp0 @iiii it's nice knowing you have this feature, but irl you'll hardly use it. Servers are expected to have perfect uptime, while a pc/lappy can be rebooted any time rly. Reboot will clear the flipped bits and in the new boot you're all fine again.

Esp important in the trading estate, as
- server reboots are very unwelcone during open market
- an unnoticed bit flip can end up in millions of $s

I see no real use case for an ECC on a PC, as mem errors are never THAT inpacting and apps are allowed to randomly crash [1-3 times a year]. Even reboots are welcome there.

Also, ECC degrades dimm performance by a few %s.

As I said, it's like wifi ax: nice to have, but you don't really *need* it. Unless you live/work at high altitudes or close to the N pole or in some radioactive area with intensive gamma radiation... But in that case bitflips are the least of your worries :)

@netikras Except when the flipped but was written to disk, then reboot doesn't help.
I don't care that much about crashes, i care about silent bitflips that messes up your data. That can cost a lot, not only in finance. And no, they can occure, you write software you shoukd be able to understand how a single bitflip can mess up data in a way that you don't notice till after it caused a lot of damage.

Well, software development with git + server with ECC it is more likely to notice a bitflip that changed data because of the nature how git works..

@happygimp0 I fail to imagine a possible realistic scenario of what you're silently imagining without proper explanation.

@iiii
Lets say you open a CAD software. You edit a sheet of metal and place a hole at 218,24. As long as you edit the file, this cooridnates are in RAM. as a float/double. Now a bitflip occurs and the hole is at 226,24 or 8 mm off. You don't notice that anymore since you look at something else.
After saving, the hole stays at 226,24. The producer probably doesn't notice that this position is wrong. He produces 100 sheets. After you recevie them you notcie they do not fit because the hole is 4mm off. So you have to drill new holes by hand and may have to repaint it, both is "expensive". Or you have to throw away then and have to reproduce them.

@lorentz as aids proliferates.