At the moment, I have 3 sticks of Corsair Vengeance 4GB in my Z77-D3H. The reason I have 3 sticks instead of 4, is because one of the sticks was faulty. I was just wondering if its really worth having sending the kit back and getting a replacement, or just getting a refund. I've heard that Windows feels noticeably snappier with 16GB of RAM. However, can't say I've really noticed much of a diffence going from 4GB to 12GB. Also, it is okay to have all the slots on my motherboard filled? I'm never really understood what "Tri-channel" and "Dual-channel" really mean. I usually just stick them in the colour coded slots. Tl;DR 16GB vs 8GB for Gaming and general use. Thanks Um. I'm a little confused, there appears to be something wrong with my RAM. http://i.imgur.com/ZcJ5K.png?1
Theoretically dual and triple channel was supposed to offer increased bandwidth. In practice however it is often not a dramatic increase. It depends a lot on the memory controller how much difference it can make if any. Technically you are running in single channel right now with 3 independent sticks. Personally I think 8GB is more than enough for most use. Unless you are running vms or something most people are highly unlikely to make use of more than 8GB, and most not more than 6GB on x64. Most software still is 32bit and won't make use of more than 4GB, but having some extra for OS and overhead is potentially useful. If it was me I would send the faulty pair back for a refund.
Thanks, I'll think about the refund. But it turns out I've only been using 3.57GB according to Windows, so I'll see if having 12GB does actually make a difference. Any ideas on why it wouldn't register the full 12GB?
Do you have 64 bit Windows? If you only have 32bit Windows it won't everbe able to make use of more than the 3.5GB. If you do have 64bit, then there may be a bios setting you need to change for memory mapping.
Okay seems I either got sent a 4GB kit by mistake, or I was stupid and misread... Still doesn't explain why only 3.57 is usable though.
Oh great, my PC is incredibly slow and it's still only recognising 3.57GB even though 8GB shows in the BIOS. Edit :Screw it, I'm done for tonight. My computer was completely unresponsive when I turned it on, had to turn it off at the plug.
have you tried fitting in the correct dual channel slot, by pairing it, if one sticks faulty i return it, inmho 8 gb enough if its a sandybridge setup they like dual channel, the older nehalem set up needed tri check your timings and voltages
Only Nehalem supports triple channel -- LGA1155 Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips only do dual channel (LGA2011 supports quad channel). You're running in single channel with three sticks as already said. Send the faulty kit back, you're supposed to get what you pay for. Same goes for any 4GB kits you got when you paid for 8GB. The shop is technically stealing money from you. Incidentally, the shop where I bought my 2x8GB kit accidentally sent me a 2x4GB kit. A quick email to their support and the correct kit was on the way. Then I sent the 2x4GB kit back after I received the 2x8GB kit.
Alright, I'm going to send back the 4GB kit and buy another 8GB kit. Once it arrives, I'll send back the faulty set. (I don't seem to have much luck with RAM, haha...) For a total of 16GB. The only thing I'm worried about is that I may have broke the my PC in some way. I mentioned earlier that the useable amount in Windows was 3.5GB, after rebooting my PC was extremely slow. I switched back to my old stick of RAM, but the PC was still acting slowly. After using a restore point, the problem still persisted. I have a new SSD arriving tomorrow, so I didn't think it was worth reinstalling Windows just for this. Does anyone know what could cause this? I googled it and apparently bent CPU pins can cause this. I guess I'll just wait and see if a reinstall fixes it.
Phew, disaster averted. Used a cool feature of Windows 8 called "Refresh my PC." Now everything's working well again. Even using all my RAM I have no idea what went wrong but it's fixed now.
