I'm in the process of building a new PC with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and a GIGABYTE X870E AORUS Elite WIFI7 motherboard. While shopping for components, I didn't realize that my CPU maxes out at 192GB of RAM, but I bought a 256GB kit that my motherboard supports. Now I'm curious—if I install the 256GB kit, will my CPU just limit it to 192GB, or might I run into some problems?
5 Answers
Hey, what do you need all that RAM for? Just curious.
It has been done before! But you might face stability issues at higher speeds if you’re pushing that much RAM. Some people have successfully run 256GB with that CPU, but remember, AM5 isn't guaranteed to work with four DIMMs. If you need that much RAM, you might want to consider moving to a Threadripper setup for smoother sailing.
If you decide to go with the 256GB, be aware that using 4 sticks may affect performance. Typically, 2 sticks run faster than 4 because it's easier to tune. Are you talking about using 2x128GB sticks, though?
Yeah, I was looking into 2x128GB, but I’m also concerned about running four DIMMs. Any tips?
That's a decent amount of RAM! But honestly, you're likely to run into issues—your system may not boot at all. It's probably best to play it safe and stick to the 192GB. Plus, really think about whether you need all that RAM; 256GB is a lot!
Just a heads up—make sure your RAM sticks are UDIMM as AM5 uses those. If you accidentally got RDIMM, they won’t fit your motherboard. And by the way, 64GB sticks of DDR5 UDIMM are hard to come by; the usual max for AM5 is 48GB per stick.
It's mainly for my development setup, where I run around 6 VMs and various Docker containers. My current rig with 128GB isn't cutting it anymore.