RAM is a mystery (putting together a parts list for a new PC)

I'm LONG overdue for a new desktop computer, been using my laptop since the desktop died maybe 4 years ago (after 8 years I think), so I'm trying to put together something as future-proof as I can but I'm much more a software guy than a hardware guy.
Parts list so far is an i7 3770K and Asus maximus v formula mobo. RAM is a stopping point for me because I just can't seem to grasp the way the specs/layout/other strange concepts work (mainly due to the terms rather than brainpower, I hope).
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For the CPU the memory specs are
max size: 32gbs
type: DDR3-1333/1600
channels: 2
max bandwidth: 25.6 GB/s
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and for the motherboard
max size: 4 x DIMM, 32GB
type: DDR3 2800(O.C.)/2666(O.C.)/2600(O.C.)/2400(O.C.)/2200(O.C.)/2133(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066
channels: dual
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So the size is simple, 32 gb it is. Yeah I'm going all out, I know.
The type - it seems simple enough that 1600 is what the processor will support, but I'm seeing on youtube and elsewhere people using higher speed--or is it "data rate," is there a difference?--ram with this combo. Ok, if it works, then why the limit in the specs, or is it a case of people going for the higher number because bigger is better in their minds, whether it does anything or not?
Compounding my confusion are a few threads where I've seen it said that there's a difference between dual channel ram when relating to performance and a dual channel layout.

I just haven't been able to decode the discussions, so here I am, wondering why--when I put the specs into new egg's search--there only seem to be two dual channel ram kits in existence that are 32gbs, 4 sticks of 8gb, 1600.

Is this where the aforementioned different definitions of "dual channel" come into play? Wondering if what I'm looking at are "tested pairs" of ram rather than 4 sticks of 8 that would be just fine together, maybe a picosecond slower.

Any lower syllable-count help would be greatly appreciated.

 

The memory speed is determined by the motherboard, if the motherboard supports it then the cpu can make use of the extra speed it's as simple as that.

Here is the kind of performance you would expect from buying faster memory, I've just chosen one of the first links I googled.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1918/4/

The other aspect of memory performance is latency or timings,two sticks with identical MHz but different price will usually have different latencies, imagine latencies as little waiting periods between when the memory can be read, the lower the latency the better then. If you would like to read more here's a short guide.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26

The other aspect of memory performance is over clocking potential, how much the memory performance can be pushed, this aspect is best looked up via review and tests of a particular stick your interested in as there's are thousands of different results.

The number of channels the memory runs in is also important so get a memory kit in the highest number of channels it supports.

Armed with this information you should be able to make a reasonably informed purchase.

EDIT do you only want a 32gb kit??? Sorry skipped over the end of your post, there really isn't any need for 32gb of memory it's quite a ridiculous amount so that's why your struggling to find kits of that size, usually when I say this the person explains to me the specific reason they need that much memory in which case they know more than me about high memory usage application, advantages and disadvantages. So I'm not much help:-D

 

Oh ok - makes you wonder why cpu manufacturers would put up memory speed associations then.

Latency as an overall concept is the one part I understand because I have a home music studio (which is the purpose of this pc being kind of a monster) and one of the major fights in a studio is always audio and midi recording latency

I think it just clicked: cpus are listed with the stock speed at which they interface with the memory, but that doesn't account for the speeds achievable with overclocking, which is where the motherboard's memory speed ratings come in and why it's listed in this case like "1800(OC), 1600, etc. Am I correct in all that?

Ok, so I should be going for a dual channel kit (of 4 sticks) as opposed to 4 individual sticks? Yeah I'm getting there.

Haha yeah. I'm doing my best to future-proof my setup while there's a bit of money there and I have the opportunity. The requirements of a music studio on a computer are pretty strict, depending on how large your song projects are getting. I've been running songs with four or five audio tracks and a couple midi-based instruments and running up against my cpu and memory. I also get in to photo and video editing here and there and would love to do some 3d work eventually, but the main thing is always audio.

Imagine this: for the past 4 years I've been working on an '06 Vaio laptop with a core2duo 1.83mhz and now recently made the jump from 1 to 2 gigs of ram. Before that I spent 7 years on a desktop with a 2001 DFI NB72-SC(or SR, can't remember) motherboard with a Pentium 4 and 1 gig of ram. The upgrade I'm making is giving me a light case of the vapors :-D

 

The amount of memory used in your music applications is something that only you can answer really but I will say I don't understand how any music application can use so much memory, you could simultaneously put 10 albums at 320kbps on 1-2gb of memory.

The main purposes I've seen use for extremely high memory needs which is the category 32gb falls into is for CAD work,photoshop,video editing/encoding,servers.virtual computing,data processing I'm sure there are lot's of others.

How much memory does your base music program use? And what are the estimated file sizes you'll be working with? Post he applications you use also someone may be able to help with the memory requirment.

Yes OC means over clock, so if you buy really fast expensive memory but plan just to plug it in and not play with the settings your wasting your money, so just go for ddr3 1600 which will be supported out of the box, this is reason for the memory associations cpu manufacturers do not support over clocking.

As for the number of channels dual channel isn't that important but I say regarding regular computer usage, if you need all that 32gb of memory it may start to play a more important role, single channel accesses one stick at a time, dual channel two stcks ect. ect. it sounds impressive but only really equates to 1-2% performance increase in regular use.

 

Ah yeah it depends on how many programs I have going at once. Using Reason alone, for instance, the base program with no operations can chug along at idle using 200-250MB--it's one of the more frugal programs when it comes to memory. Add in an audio track (wav format, rock bottom 16bit/44.1kHz but preferably 24/96) and it'll jump right up. You don't want to use compressed audio formats when making music. Wav only or it becomes blech. Say someone from a tv show shows interest in a song you made - if you give them an mp3, they'll have to upsample it pretty severely.
If the song is all audio, figure 1-3 vocal tracks, 1-3 guitar tracks, a bass track, and around 5 or 6 drum tracks at that high quality rate really piles up. Song files can easily get into the 1 GB range per song, but that's as a file just sitting there inactive.
Automating a volume fader will only take a little bit of memory, but automate twelve of them along with a bunch of other things and that piles onto the total. Then you realize you need to compress the vocals with a quick attack time as well at the kick drum (oh man I have no idea how to explain that, along with much of the other stuff here). All this stuff is hopefully up in memory, ready in a moment's notice, while you're also looping a section and recording a drum fill with a midi controller, etc. The scary thing is what I just described is kind of a small song.

Full-on CAD I'm not touching, but might get into 3ds max, maya, or mudbox.

I think 1600 is probably the best bet for me after this discussion, at least for now. One of my concerns is this system aging as well as possible as programs get hungrier. Yeah, 32 is overkill at the moment but I'm nothing if not prepared I won't be overclocking right now, but I do want to have that option and the option to water-cool in the future.
Right, I assumed the OC had to refer to overclocking, but was wondering if the board ratings were saying that was to only way to obtain those speeds - heh, to be honest I'd be concerned about blowing things up.
By the looks of things, 4 individual sticks cost within a dollar of the same ram in a dual channel, 4-stick kit. Guess I might as well go for it there.
Hadn't thought of them not advocating overclocking, makes sense though. I imagine it would lead to a bunch of claims against them when users push it too far.
Thanks so much for talking me through this, there was some sort of number blockage there. :wine

 

Memory alone overclocking is very easy you just bump up the memory multiplier 'also known as memory divider' there's little chance anything will be damaged. The performance increase isn't that great though, fast memory comes into it's own when your overclocking your cpu and don't want to use a lower memory divider.

One interesting thing if you want low latency memory for your audio editing is if you buy really fast memory it will run at much lower latencies than what's written on the box, you will have to manually experiment lowering each one though.

It's no problem glad I could help

Thanks for the audio editing explanation also

 

Haha don't encourage me, I could step over the line into being on some nutso mission very easily :-D

Oh wow, that's odd - every other everything seems to overstate it's specs, like using peak wattage on speakers as opposed to RMS.
Hey, if you ever get into production drop a line - I have nifty computer-based toys I can recommend.

 

Latency and frequency are related, if memory is advertised as ddr3 1800 9-9-9-24 this means is guaranteed to run at 1800mhz with those memory timings but if you buy ddr 1800 and just want it to run 1600 then the memory may run at 1600 8-8-8-23, some memory manufactures publish the timings their memory is guaranteed to run at at various speeds.

Tightening the memory timings is also a form of over clocking,if you don't want to increase the frequency of the memory you can lower the latency to make full use of good memory, but again you will have go under the hood and alter the settings yourself using some experimentation. Motherboards will not default to the fastest timings, they default to the memory's default timings.

Thanks for the offer, I will:-D

 

Oh Jeez, now I KNOW I'm going to be tweaking this stuff to find out how low I can get that latency - might be the law of diminishing returns on this one though, since there's also the latency between the midi controller and the interface. Say for example my Maschine Mk2 hooked through USB3, to the program which then has to access the sample (in memory) that each pad is playing while concurrently recording a note into the sequencer. Right now on the aforementioned laptop (through usb 2.0) my midi latency is 30 or 40 milliseconds. You'd never guess it, but that's pretty noticeable when you're playing right in time, you're hearing it as you play, again right in time, but then you listen back and it's just slightly off-beat. If that little situation can be fixed it will be like Christmas morning. Then again it may literally be on Christmas when this comes together.
I bet I don't have to touch it, but I will anyway

 

How are you testing the latency?

Are you familiar with DPC latency checker? Reducing the number of processes and debugging various high latency drivers would improve the latency much more than faster memory for real time latency problems.

I'll post incase you haven't but I'd imagine it's part of your toolkit.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

I've been forgetting to grab that program for quite a while now
I'll have to do it today - most programs will calculate your latency based on the driver, buffer size in samples, and its sample rate (44.1 to 192kHz) and give you an input and output latency, but I doubt that's the most accurate way to find it.

I just discovered that new egg is NOT the place to narrow down your search. Went to the Corsair site and found 4 32gb 1600 dual channel kits: they're listed as quad channel on NE, but the dual channel NE has listed is actually quad! I wonder how they managed that :confused

 

Greetings, becolt...

I've been monitoring this thread purely for enjoyment - Rikky's a pretty sharp cookie and you seem to be on top of things, so it's fun watchin' a couple of geeks work on something geeky.

Nothing to add as far as the RAM subject - just want to remind your budget that you'll need a new operating system and that you'll need a beefy power supply to feed all of those memory modules: a good online PSU wattage calculator is located here.

Good luck!

 

Haha glad to have you in here!
Yeah when it comes to music I geek out pretty easily, even when it's not tech-related, but combine the two and I forget to eat for long periods. Last week's Christmas present to myself was very dangerous for that reason:

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/ProductImageCompressAll300/A109_129954923536426641SuNTawPM0X.jpg

PSU... Yep. That is the area I'm suspecting I'll be surprised by the price. Feel like Dr Frankenstein :-D

Just spotted in the wilderness of the Corsair site: they messed things up too by giving one of the 32 gb kits a 16gb title. In the specs AND in the model # it says 32. I've facepalmed multiple times this morning.

 

Well DPC latency checker is good for seeing if you have a latency problem it doesn't help much finding what's causing it, for that you have to use task manager to work out which process is causing the latency spikes and experiment disabling processes, it also won't test for hardware latency between your audio devices.

For your purposes I would definitely be looking at a stripped down windows install with the absolute minimum number of running windows services and application processes in general.

All dual,triple, and quad channels are matched pairs that are guaranteed to running dual channel mode of memory for example dual channel has two matched pairs, triple channel 3 matched pairs, so quad channel is 4 matched sticks that will work in quad channel.

The point is for multi channel memory to work they have to be identical and are tested in factory to work in multi channel mode but they can still be used as individual sticks, you can also use a quad channel kit in a dual channel motherboard, or just 3 sticks in a triple channel motherboard.

The reason people don't usually do this is because there a price premium for a quad channel kit so you waste a little money not running it as such, if you see a quad channel kit with the specs you want and at a good price go for it, it will work fine.

Finally Caliban realises my evil genius muhahaha!!!!:-D

 

Oh it's the hardware latency where it's mattering in my case Ah well, soon enough I'll be using up to date connections where it matters and that ought to take care of a lot of it, not to mention doubling my processor (this one is a duo 1.83). I've pretty much stripped the running processes down to the required windows stuff. Can't say I'm looking forward to doing that in windows 7 here soon.

Dual/triple/quad: Ohhhhhh. Makes perfect sense. Works just like vacuum tubes. In that case my options just opened WAY up, heh.

Ruh roh! >;D