Gadgetory

de Lille okay so why does memory come with more than one stick in a kit what are these channels everyone's always talking about find out everything you need to know about Ram channels as fast as possible by watching this video when shopping for computer memory there's all kinds of specs to pay attention to including the frequency the timings the voltage and how many sticks actually come in the kit and how many channels they're rated for you can usually tell by the little number on the memory itself or on the box showing you how many pieces are intended to be in the kit that's normally how many channels its intended to be operated in before you buy your memory you need to check your motherboard or computer system to find out how many channels it supports the easiest way to do this is the manual or the manufacturer website but failing that you can check the labels on the motherboard itself or you can usually tell by checking for color coded memory slots so they are normally coded with all the same colors for how many sticks you're supposed to populate at a time with one kit this particular board is a quad channel board which means it has four slots that are one color and four slots that are another color that doesn't mean that you have to run quad channel kits in it it just means that that's what will yield the best performance now a memory kit is just a bunch of individual memory sticks that are validated to work with each other flawlessly in however many channel operation it's rated for so in this case a quad channel kit could be reduced to a triple channel kit or a dual channel kit just by taking memory sticks away because all those sticks are still validated to work with each other normally that is to say that you could normally take a quad channel kit install all four sticks in a dual channel motherboard and it would operate in dual channel with your full capacity full performance and everything normally I said normally an awful lot of times in that last shot there there's a reason for that this is a quad channel kit could I install it in a dual channel board sure yes would it work probably there are primary timings which the manufacturer tells you so if it doesn't detect correctly in your dual channel board you could easily change them around but there are actually more timings in fact some boards will give you access to secondary and even tertiary timings on the memory that can be optimized to work with a particular platform if the manufacturer sells you a quad-channel kit they're expecting you to use it in an LGA 2011 board not at 11:56 1155 or am-3 board if you want to run in dual channel generally speaking by a dual channel kit if you want to run in quad channel don't buy two dual channel kits because they might work but you're better off to buy a quad channel kit because sometimes those optimizations even though there's nothing wrong with the memory and nothing wrong with the board can cause stability issues and they can be difficult to override and to diagnose now I'm not going to try and convince you that if you mix and match your memory your system is going to explode it's not going to work at all because there's a good chance it actually will however if you're populating your memory with unmatched Stix there is a chance that they won't operate in dual channel or triple channel or quad channel or whatever your motherboard is rated for which can negatively impact your performance in fact in this board right here I've got a triple channel kit installed in a dual channel motherboard which can on some boards actually reduce the entire memory bank to single channel performance so if you need the extra RAM capacity more than you need the bandwidth there can still be a benefit to doing this but in most cases it's not ideal you're better off to take one stick out or add another matching stick another example would be a quad channel motherboard with a single stick installed this example gives you one quarter of the total bandwidth that that CPU might need or that that motherboard is capable of delivering so it's just not an optimal configuration whoa hey guys thanks for watching this episode of as fast as possible on tech quickie if you enjoyed it make sure you subscribe and also don't forget to hit that like button it helps us out a lot share this video with anyone you think might benefit from it and if you have any ideas for future episodes as fast as possible click the link in the description of the video and leave us a suggestion we will make sure to monitor and hopefully you'll see your idea soon see you guys again next time