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I have done some searching and I have not found a straight forward answer to my problem. As all the questions I came over searching were concerning using only two RAM slots with not more than 4GB of RAM.

I am currently building a PC for the purpuse of doing some really heavy graphics; mostly with 3dsmax and the Unity3d engine. The PC will have +- the following set up.

MOTHER BORAD - ASUS ROG Rampage IV Extreme Intel X79

PROCESSOR - Intel Core i7-3930K // Intel Core i7 3820 3,60 GHz

GPU - AMD Raden 7970

RAM - 4x 16GB (2x8GB) 1600Mhz Kingston DDR3 (64GB RAM can be handled by the motherboard)

I have two unsolved problems:

Would there would be an option to use just 32GB/64GB RAM slots in the Mother Board; which would save me some cash for now. Or would it cause some serious problems such as dramatical performance drop?

The second question is: How can I tell if the processor would be able to handle the ammount of 64 GB of RAM?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3930k-3820-test-benchmark,3090-7.html

According to TomsHardware.com the i3930K needs 2 minutes to render something that i7 3820 needs about 2:30 min Intel Core i7-3930K (faster) Intel Core i7 3820 3,60 GHz (slower but 2x cheaper)

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No, this will not negatively affect your stability. The DDR3 specification allows you to run with one DDR3 DIMM per channel, that's perfectly within limits, and there is no need to put a DIMM on every channel.

That said, the best performance is usually achieved by using exactly one DDR3 DIMM per channel, all identical. So, to get 64GB on a 4-channel CPU like the Core i7, you indeed would want 4 identical modules of 16 GB.

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  • Thanks, so if I want to use 32GB for now, I can just buy 2x(2x8B) place them in the channels, and when I will need more I will just have to buy another pair of RAM's?> :)
    – Mikolaj Marcisz
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 9:46
  • yup, pretty much that.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 9:48
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First I would like to say that not all x79 motherboards have 8 slots. Many only have 4 slots. For the boards that have 8 slots they are there only as an option but you DO NOT want to use them all unless you require more ram than what 4 slots can provide you. Filling all 8 slots will cause a lot more stress on your ram controller and the ram in general. You may have issues with stability that require voltage increases.

So unless you require 64GB of ram I would suggest running only 32GB and ensuring they go into the correct slots.

Other answer is: WHen you search google for the model for example 3930k you will have a result with the word Ark in the result. This is the Intel page and the max memory will be listed on that page. The max is indeed 64GB.

You can also expect an easy 20-30% overclock on these processors without too much effort. People familiar with over-clocking can get much further.

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  • "Stress" on a memory controller? Voltage increases? As long as you keep your DDR3 speed within specifications, you don't need to alter the voltage, and there's no "stress" on the controller. Of course, when you do violate specifications in search of speed (overclocking), then you do put stress on the controller. And at that point you'd better understand what you're doing. Dropping your memory by 50% just to run your CPU 20% faster may not be a benefit at all.
    – MSalters
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 9:10
  • As for the x79 MB I am taking the Asus Rampage Extreme, and it is one of those rare which can handle 64 GB RAM. And I will be needing 64GB RAM for large scale simulations. Hopefully I got about 3 months until I will be doing that so I wanted to ask If I have to spend the $333 Bucks for the RAM. Thanks for answering :)
    – Mikolaj Marcisz
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 9:45

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