Need help with choosing memory

souper

Honorable
Dec 2, 2012
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0
10,510
Hello,

A friend of mine moved in with me for a few months, and we decided to bring my old PC out of retirement so that she can use it.

The hardware is in good condition, except that there is no RAM.

The motherboard is an "asus rampage III gene", and the processor is a core i7 930 bloomfield processor @ 2.8 ghz.
there is no overclocking done, except for an aftermarket gtx 480 graphics card.

What I am confused about, is that when I looked up the motherboard specs, it says that the motherboard supports triple channel memory. I have read that the i7 series also supports triple channel memory.

Could you guys kindly explain to me what the difference is, between dual and triple channel memory, and which type of RAM kits are better for this current setup.

Also, we are looking for at least 8 gb of RAM(and at most 16gb), so I would appreciate suggestions on specific RAM kits/products.


Thank you :)



p.s. the motherboard support maximum of 24gb RAM. is it worth it?
 

Xttony

Distinguished
With a LGA 1366 board you can only add upto 24 gB (6x4gb cards) all DDR3 memory sticks are supported except the very high frequency cards.
Go for corsair vengeance 3x4gB or 6x4gB as the triple channel will be used. Corsair vengeance says it is quad channel but I am using the same chipset with i7 980 x and got vengeance 6x4gB and it works like a charm.

If you are using more than 12 gB the only they will come into use. If you use less than 12 gB then the other 3cards won't do anything or increase the speed. Triple channel means that there are three memory controllers or three cards can be used simultaneously.
 

Xttony

Distinguished
A fine choice, what's better is, if any of the cards fail you will have all the cards replaced. You don't wanna be stuck with one new card and others old. Because there is a fair chance the specs if the cards won't match and that will cause crashes