Please do more videos like this, information like this is hard to find without already looking for it. So for someone who doesn't know a lot of hardcore in-depth PC knowledge this is veeery useful

"the rankieness of a stick"

It's been way too long since I last shot a video so this one took forever to do and I'm still not happy with it.

When I saw the title, I thought "Memory tierlist incoming"

I'm now more confused than before.

I've been waiting for someone to explain RAM ranks forever. Thanks for the valuable information.

Long time follower here, this video is really good for me. I try to find information about dual&single rank 2 months ago, and can't find really good information. Very aprecite, you're doing a great work with the channel.

thanks for the video, always good to learn a bit more about often forgotten physical aspects of memory and how it effects.

Your voice is strangely soothing. No obnoxious intro, no cringy electronic music, I could easily fall asleep to your videos. Which is not a bad thing watchtimevise.

Thanks for the info. I've seen information about ranks show up in my configuration screens and hw info programs every now and then, but I didn't think much about what it meant, nor did I pay much attention to it. This is good knowledge to have when/if I want to squeeze the most out of my still DDR3-based equipment.

The black GA78LMT-USB3 revision is so much nicer than the earlier blue revisions...

So in short every DDR SIDE has a memory interface, you can have a DDR with two interfaces (dual rank) or with an unpopulated side (single rank). DDR on the same channel are "linked" so only one interface at a time can be used and they must all work with the same timings, voltages and clock speeds (because those the MEMORY CHANNEL timings and clocks). "Total rank" is the number of ranks on a channel, so one single rank = 1 rank, one dual rank or two single rank = 2 ranks, one single rank and one dual rank = 3 ranks and obviously two dual ranks = 4 ranks total. Having more ranks is useful because CPU can, in some occasion, interleave between multiple channels (like issuing one command on a rank and then "work" on another one while the first is processing).

Thank you for all this (slightly rambling) explanation!

On sandy bridge memory clock dropped all the way to 1333 from dual channel dual rank to dual channel quad rank, 1600 POST but unstable, for Haswell it drop from 2400-2666 to 1600-1866. And my exploration on this actually DDR4 is very good on dual channel quad rank b die, at least on T-Topology board.

Hello people who came to this video after a bunch of misleading videos and """reviews"" regarding Ryzen 5000 magically working better with 4 sticks vs 2 sticks, where said """""""""""""""review"""""""""""""" does not even mentioned nor memory topology of the MB, nor the rank of the memory.

Just discovered your channel and I have to say you make great content, especially vids like these where you explain how things work. I whatched some other videos where you talk about RAM (the topology and the Ryzen 3000 memory system one). What I still not get is how the memory controller selects the ranks (not sure if I missed that or you didn't mention this). So my first thought how it could work was that you have two additional connections from the CPU to the memory for selection but you mentioned that it was made to increase capacity without adding additional lines. And you mentioned that you can run operations on different ranks simultaneously if the operations don't conflict. So this wouldn't be possible with the two additional connections approach (I guess).

Perfect timing on video production! Considering adding two 8 gb single rank sticks or two 16gb dual rank sticks in my editing rig. Great info regarding dual rank frequency loss. Currently running 2x8gb G Skill FlareX 3200c14 on x370 K-7. Looking for 32gb total system memory. Will now just add 2 more of the same exact sticks. Any difference in frequency will have to be better than using 2x16gb dual rank Corsair 300mhz Platinum. I am currently running 3533mhz stable at 14-15-14 and low sub timings. Thank You 1USMUS ! Thank You Actually Hardcore Overclocking for all of your help with Ryzen memory overclocking!!

Nice, thanks Buildy! I remember wendell of L1T very vaguely mentioning the rank interleaving thing, but i'd not been bothered to read up on it. With the understanding I have of logic/etc and this explanation I now understand it. I'm not an extreme overclocker, but a user who likes to butt heads with the law of diminishing returns in an effort to make my system as nice as i can without spending xloads extra cash(yorkshireman). Looking forward to a possible new IMC on Zen 7nm, and maybe new DDR5, hoping to not lose so many mhzies with extra ranks

Oh gosh , thank you. You just cleared up a lot of information for me. I have a ryzen system, and I am going to pay attention to how the memory works.

Thanks, was pretty much how I expected but I had no clue as to the actual workings.

That last bit was really intresting nice =)

That cleared up a little bit of my confusion.

It would be interesting to learn when 4x single-rank clocks better than 2x dual-rank depending on the motherboard, especially regarding the recent video about memory traces - I figured that 2x dual-rank should usually clock a bit better

Whos here after finding out you'll want dual rank DDR4 on each channel with Ryzen 5000 to know what it is?

Thank you very much, that cleared up a lot of confusion about all the information on various vendor sites. But I have to say, it is incredibly annoying that for example GSkill does not even specify what kind of memory setup they use. Further, thanks to all these "heat spreaders", you cannot simply look at the chips and their layout to find what you get in the package.

hi, you can clearly see how many ranks are in a DDR module by looking at the lablel . In general you will see something like PC3-12800U 2Rx8 that is ddr3 1600 unbuffered at dual rank, or 1Rx8 - single rank 8 chips, or 2Rx16 - dual rank 16 chips (dual side), 4Rx8 - quad rank DDR module...etc.

Wow. I have that board in my "to be e-waste disposed" pile.

thanks for the update

Rankiness, I like it

Amazing video!

Don't know if this is still a thing but... when I used to setup servers (90's - 05) sometimes the spec would require alternate rank memory. So we used to determine the rank off the ID tag, You would find a 1Rx for single rank and a 2Rx for dual rank. There is more to it... just can't recall... Hence, I am watching and learning with you all.. BTW thank you for the video. Nice job.

It's a wonderful video. Cheer up

Holy s**** why did i never see this video.. thats so damn important and actually the information that i needed for my current Memory Setup that im running since some years now which yeah is 2 dual rank and 2 single rank and i was always wondering why i couldnt get the momory clock higher o,o THANKS !!!!

I learned a bit here. I'm having problems on Ryzen :( I have 4x single sided dual rank 16GB 2400 sticks. They all work fine solo but when I pair them up (even just 2 of them) I get random BSODs. I already tried all sorts of seating configurations.

So I learned something new today, I got 2 kits of ram and saw one was a duel and one was single in CPUZ I thought that's wonky and googled it as you do and well I find out it's perfectly normal, now I knew my ram voltages were not so good as 1 kit is 1.5 and the other is 1.65, but the JEDEC profiles say its 1.5v on both sticks and the XMP profile on the 1.5v was a match for a JEDEC profile on the other. So at least I know even if I manually set the timings it all work. Thanks for the VOD!

From the daisy chain vs T-topology video I understood that 2 sticks work better on daisy chain than on T-topology board (because daisy chain has shorter trace) and that in 4 stick configuration T-topology handles it better. Now onto 17:00 question, I'm wondering which is better: 4 single rank sticks on T-topology board vs 2 dual rank sticks on daisy chain board? (dual channel configurations). If 4x single rank has no advantage over 2x dual rank (it could be opposite too), then daisy chain dual rank one should win in overclocking stability due to daisy chain advantage. But what about performance and actual configuration? Does 2 dual rank sticks perform identically to 4 single rank sticks on a T-topology board?

If I may make a suggestion: Look in to mixed channel configurations like Flex mode and Mixed Interleave dual-channel. I abuse this with one of my systems and the setup is like this: 2x 4GB in the first channel + a single 8GB stick in the second channel. This results in 16GB in dual channel by using Interleave on the two 4GB sticks.

Very Useful, I always wanting to know about that, didn't know what to do when on that part of the UEFI. Why dual rank will suck? More chips more coordination latency? If we can have dual channel, and an OS and apps in 64-bit mode why can't we have 128-bit RAM access at least 50% of the time? Wouldn't the Ganged and Unganged make 64-bit of data be stored on each channel, so a 64-bit Instruction would use 2 64-bit data parameters, then they'll come from the 2 channels in a single 128-bit fetch? GamersNexus made Dual Cuannel vs Single Channel tests, and Dual sucked hard, performance benefits were from 0-15% mos of the time 5-10%, more on the 5%, and in practice I have found that when I forget to put RAM in dual channel, I discovered it out of an optimization routine check, not on performance alone, WTF? That's supposed to be the performance wr dream about and is fail, can you please make a video about it?

thanks! Any website that shows ranks for RAM models without having to get your hands on one to take peeks behind heatspreaders?

Whoa, those sticks are really rank! LOL So, what you're saying is two single rank sticks in duel channel mode will overclock to a higher speed than two double rate sticks in duel channel mode? Nice to know. I think I want to research this further. Thanks Mr. B.

I'm very interested to find some up-to-date information on ranks surrounding Zen 2 and maybe Zen 3 (in the short future).

ok i am confused. i came here for 5minutes info and 15minutes axtra rambling but instead i got 22minutes of info. i like it :D keep up the good work. ramble or not its always entertaining

I'm now running a DDR4 32GB dual channel, dual rank memory configuration in my Kaby Lake Z170 laptop (2x16GB kit, 4 chips on each side of each stick). Previously I had a single 16GB dual rank stick and I definitely got a performance boost going dual channel and I've been wondering if using a dual channel dual rank configuration makes any real difference or not, but I'm guessing based on your video that the gains I'm seeing are most likely at least mostly (if not totally) due to the fact that I'm now running in dual channel mode vs single channel mode. Thankfully I'm able to use the same XMP profile on the dual channel configuration as I was on the single stick/single channel configuration (XMP 2, 1501MHz for an effective 3002MHz clock speed, 16-18-18-39 57tRC, 2T command rate). Things are definitely snappier now than they were with the single stick configuration, but again, I'm betting that's just due to the benefits of dual channel, not the ranks. I had been wondering about whether or not the real world performance was any different between dual rank single channel and going to dual channel but after seeing the benchmarks done by HW Unboxed for game load times and other tasks for dual vs single channel I decided to bite the bullet and buy the kit (I didn't bother trying to find another single stick identical to what shipped with my laptop since the chances were remote that I'd get the same exact one, so I just pulled it and replaced it with the RAM from the 32GB kit; thankfully the price wasn't too bad for the Vengeance kit I got and I did get as close to the stick that shipped with the system for timings/speed/model etc. just for the sake of assured compatibility since some boards can be picky). I still have yet to see any benchmarks on single vs dual vs quad channel for boards like the X299 that support quad channel though, but I'm guessing that beyond a certain point, unless you're doing some seriously RAM intensive task like working with some massive videos on a rendering/editing/compression project or a scientific workload, that there probably wouldn't be much difference, especially for ordinary tasks like booting the OS and launching games etc. Anyway, thanks for posting this. It was very educational and answered a lot of my questions about this subject.

I still have a gigabyte 78lmt (not in use though). It was legendary for am3 matx. Thanks BZ! Love the video.

do you know how to control the fan speed on the board shown in the video? I have one of these boards and cannot figure out how to do it

PLEASE HELP! Does this 14:01 hold true even now (2021,07), with Ryzen 5000 Series!? Quad rank with R7 5800X for example? Iwas thinking of buying 4 sticks 3200 Mhz (64GB - cheaper), instead of 4 sticks and 16 GB 3600 Mhz (64 GB total) with CL16 or CL 14.

I had no idea about ranks in RAM - only channels and ECC. So in theory this would explain why some RAM with the 'same' speed and similar timings could be a lot more expensive- especially for Ryzen? e.g. The reason why GSkill Flare X quad channel kits cost a lot more? - or is that just a supply and demand thing?

Is the loss of frequency no longer an issue on Ryzen 5000? All the other videos are all say DUAL RANK ALL DAY! They do have 16GB single rank sticks now, Crucial Ballistix are single rank 16GB now. Also what are the drawbacks to running 4 sticks of Ram? Does it depend on the motherboard's PCB layers? Does it only limit overclocking? I am so confused now. I was seeking out dual rank 16GB sticks over my 4 x 8 Ballistix I just bought. With everything going out of stock and going up in price, I really wish I could figure this out soon.

@buildzoid So in theory, if i have a double sided module (e.g.8gb), it can still be single rank when it has 16x4bit ICs? How likely is it to find such a layout (nowadays)?

@AHOC In your opinion, would it be better to go for 4x modules of SR DDR4, or 2x modules of DR? From what I recall, there aren't 32GBs sets of SR 2x modules, right? The platform would be Ryzen.

Is there any difference between buying 4x8GB SingleRank and 2x16GB DualRank memory (for dual channel config)? As far As I remeber you said there is no DDR4 SingleRank 16GB module?

Ok maybe this question is kind of dumb, but im new to this, so, what if my origin laptop ram is single rank, and i want to replace it with dual rank does it bad or good, cause i search other source, its says it doesn't really important, so what do you say, is it will be a problem changing the rank or not?

So, if I’m looking to build a budget PC based on either a Ryzen 2, 3000 series CPU or possibly a 3000 series APU which I believe is Ryzen +, but want 16GB RAM (slight overkill but don’t want to upgrade RAM later) and haven’t chosen a motherboard yet, what RAM config should I use (stick size, rank and number of)?

Just so I understand this correctly, memory ranking is pretty much the reason why it is recommended to not mix and match memory sticks/kits even though they have the same rated speed and timing across one another, aside from silicon lottery... because memory rank is going to determine data processing efficiency?

I'm pretty confused right now , can you tell please , what is better for gaming , 2x16gb dual rank 3200Mhz or 2x8gb single rank 3600Mhz???? Because i can get one of them on similar price and they are on the QVL of the MB. FHD monitor + rx580 + r5 3600. I will appreciate the help.

hello! i have two corsair ram kits, looking at cpu-z they are single rank dimms. both kits are the exact same 2x8 3200 speed vengeance lpx.. BUT I DONT KNOW WHAT ORDER TO PUT THE DIMMS IN OR WHAT SPEED TO RUN THEM AT, i have already suffrered a few BSODs today. however, i can confirm that both kits work and none of the sticks are DOA (dead on arrival) because I have tested both kits alone in my system and they have both worked in single rank dual channel (populating two slots only, slot 2 and 4). so I am really confused. I imagine I am not the only one who has gone through this struggle. Any pc whizzes out there that can help me? THANKS for reading this. my motherboard is an msi b450 tomahawk max with 4 ram slots ofc, my cpu is a ryzen 7 2700x. Any help is greatly appreciated :))))

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I was wondering how much better my memory oc could get if i swapped to a 2 dimm board. My ram already does 4000 cl16-16-16-36 nt1 1.39v on my maximus x hero and 8700k

Thaiphoon Burner displays rank right? I should double-check my x58 system. Triple channel with 6 sticks of ddr3, 24 GB so that's what 4 rank per channel? X58 was a weird platform with xenon chips so it should be fine.

every video of yours I feel like I know less then i started with.

Buildzoid treating his stop button like others their dog. "come here"

My 3200mhz Dominator ddr4 16GB 2x8 kit, the memmory analyzer says sk hynix :/, I wanted samsung b-die. this memmory overclocks to 3466 1.36V CL16 I am using it ar 3200mhz stock timings. it has 16bit row addresing bits 10bit columm addresing bits 16 banks single rank device width in bits 8 on the msi gaming carbon x4700 ryzer 5 2600 is it good for the ryzen? and what is the loss of performance if I add another identical kit? Sometimes windows 10 gets corrupted when I overclock over 3200 you have tested the msi mb, what about the timings?

I'm getting really interested in this topic... wich might be bad for my wallet... Is there any config of 24GB ddr4 that makes sense? I don't really have an use for 32, but I'd like more than 16 cause I occasionally fill it up (i like to have 2 chrome tabs open :P). What would be best "rankiness" wise on an Intel platform (6700K, soon to be upgraded)?

Buildzoid you should know better than amyone else. I did the g12 mod on my 1080ti. will the vram and vrm be perfectly fine without heatsinks. Should the fan blowing directly on them be fine?

I adopted Ryzen early. I have an 1800x / Crosshair VI with a 32 GB kit of TridentZ (2x16 GB) 3200 cl14. They're two sticks of dual rank Samsung B-die, and I run it at 3333 cl14. With Samsung B-die, you can do just fine with Ryzen. this is Zen 1, too, so with the refresh it gets better, and will likely be better still with Zen 2 in a few months. I had this running at 3600 cl16, but I couldn't get it stable enough to trust. I use 14 GB of the kit in RAM caching (PrimoCache), so I'm using them fully and they need stability. I couldn't be happier with the kit, but I would have been *much* happier if they didn't cost $370. Memory shot up when I built my PC, and then GPUs followed shortly after.. What a mess that was.

GA-78LMT-USB3. The board with at least a hundred revisions lol!

I have a somewhat unusual combination, got 2 kits of 2x8 GB DDR4 (same part number) and got 1 single rank kit, and 1 dual rank kit. Would it be better to have one channel single rank, the other dual rank, or two channels with 3 ranks?

I have both those balistix and gskill blue sticks and could never get the blues to work in my mobo(P5Q3 deluxe (P45 Chip)) But a couple of weeks ago, I got very drunk and started OC'ing and experimenting and got a single ballistix and a single gskill blue to fire up (in the 1st and 3rd slots) and a stable windows boot. Then I screwed around some more and corrupted the bios and never could get it to work again even after a reflash... =( The things that I do whilst drunk. ^.^

If I were to play a racing sim or perhaps a fighting game like Tekken 7, locked at 60 fps.. and if I were to have a single rank 8gb or a dual rank 8gb clocked at 2666 mhz. Which ranking ram will stress me out the least?

@Buildzoid : can you tell me safe timings for Hynix AFR (HyperX Predator DDR4 3200, 2x 4gb SR) on a Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 (Bios F6e) with a R5 2600X? System Boots, but I get BSODs with just XMP 1 or 2 (3000 or 3200 MHz) with 1.35V. Even with the "safe" Settings of Dram Calculator for Ryzen 1.4.0.. maybe you have an idea how to run 3200MHz on my Ram. Or may i have a bad IMC? Thanks in Advance..

hmm.. What if you use slot 1 and 2 are the timings then closer to each other???, instead of 1 and 3.. i tested slot 0 and 3 and didnt like it, wierd things were happening haha.. but now i am testing slot 1 and 2 and like it very much in everyday applications.. i will do some bench testing later

What do you think about the '"made for AMD" trend? Marketing hooah or did they consider the single vs dual rank on Ryzen into account?

I like the Video but didn't quite understand it... I need to watch this when I wake up in the morning not when I'm dog tired in the afternoon. I just want to know if I should buy 32Gb of ram in 2x 16Gbits or 4x 8Gbits for my next PC based on the Ryzen9 38xx Series & x570 Mobos (since I don't update CPU's for years and years). For reference, I'm still rocking my Sandybridge 2600K with DDR3 Corsair Vengeance Pro 32GB (4 x 8GB) 2133MHz which is Dual / Quad Channel (I believe?). Which I usually utilize >70% majority of the time. I'm looking for the highest possible frequency to help with speeding up the infinity fabric, something like G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-4000C19D-32GTZR ,OR, Trident Z RGB F4-4000C17Q-32GTZR. So the impression that to acheieve high frequency it's best to have fewer DIMMs populated, will the difference in Latency 19 Vs 17 is there much difference? This is all presuming Ryzen 3xxx will be able to achieve 4KMhz if not then I could possibly pull in the timing eg Cas18 etc (for the Cas19) if only 3866Mhz is supported.

What dual rank ram on one channel and single rank ram on other channel? Does it cause problems?

Thank you.

Good video @Actually Hardcore Overclocking.Just had a flashback when Tech Yes City was benchmarking Xeon 1680v2 vs 2700x vs 9900k.For Ryzen he choose Sniper X @3600MT/sec CL18,that was just disgusting to watch.

Can you please do a ram overclocking guide or demo? I feel like theres not that much comprehensive info out there and I'd love to learn how to do it right

I just built a 3950X system. I'm barely learning about ranks and this video was quite long and not easy to grasp the first time around. I definitely need to watch this over more than once or twice again to really understand it all. Now reading from more sources, it seems some people are saying that if I want a total of 32GB on my board, on Ryzen 3000, it's better that I only fill 2 channels with 2x16GB instead of 4x8GB? Because Ryzen 3000 only supports single and dual channels. The RAM I'm using are Corsair Vengeance PRO RGB 3200MHz CL16. Can someone enlighten me on this? Thanks

Which would perform worse on a ryzen system 2x16gb or 4x8gb? the 16gb module is dual rank and the 8gb module is single rank.

What is optimal dimm slot population if you have 4* 8 GB sticks if two are dual rank and 2 are single rank? Dual channel ddr4 intel z390 Same brand and product line and identical speeds and timings.

So... On Ryzen 2700x. If you want 32GB DDR4, is it better to run 4x single rank, or 2x dual rank? And would it tank it completely if you ran 64GB 4x dual rank?

Dude awesome.

I have that exact model of motherboard, it's not bad.

I have an 8gb 2133mhz single rank ram installed in my notebook. Another available stick is 8gb 2133mhz dual rank. Both are 1.2v and cl15 can they be used together in dual channel ?

Thanks for the rank vid after our mini back and forth in the topology one's comments. Get Steve to loan you some sticks so we can bench the 1R 4 sticks vs 2R 2 sticks w/OC! Jesus must have everything ;)

I always questioned myself this, Can I mix this dual rank 8gb ram to this single rank 4gb ram? Both ram sticks have the same frequency, same latency, same voltage, but different brand, and rank. Can you actually mix them?

Thanks dude

Boy, that was hard to follow. Correct me if i am wrong, this is what i understood: -One memory CHANNEL needs a 64bit interface. -Memory Chips are put into a RANK with 64 bit interface. This limits capacity of that RANK. -To increase Capacity, more Ranks are put on sharing the 64bit Channel. -more Channels more Bandwith -More ranks per channel can be stronger (capacity and/or performance) but limit clockspeed -on Ryzen you want Clockspeed. How'd i do?

gaddemet. now i need to learn memory ranking too

Oh, that's my motherboard. Does this imply it's a decent mobo? Here I was worried I was likely to break something if I tried OCing my FX6300 even slightly, tbh. (regardless, I really, really want to upgrade from this 6300... Ideally to something more modern.) but would it perhaps be worth tossing in an 8350 or something if I got one really cheaply in the meantime?

that motherboard is nostalgic for me

those Ballistix can do 2800 9-10-13 on z97 ocf :D on air. thanks for this great video.

Thanks for the explanation, perfectly clear. Now I understand why I could never get in grips with Single/Double Sided. Now its obvious that its just pointless nomenclature/distinction, and says pretty much nothing about memory, except chip count. The simplest way to get rank is to multiply chip count by their number of bit width and divide that by 64. That's it. Which side they're on doesn't really matter. For example, 16x4bit 1Gb will be single rank, while 16x8bit 512Mb will be dual rank, yet both will be 8GB and double-sided, which tells you nothing.

Ah man, a saw your video before i bought my ryzen 3 month ago, but i didnt remember. I used my 32GB dual rank memory at 3000MHz with XMP, it was freezing random. I tried disable C States, Power Supply Idle Voltage, diasbling lan, audio, Windows 10 Power Management settings etc. Now i know why it was bad. With 2400MHz is rock stable. Thank you for educating people. I dont understand why AMD didn't warn people at their page.

What happens if you use 4 sticks different timings of 2 dual rank the same sticks and 2 single rank the same sticks but they are ddr4 3600MTs but different timings?

I have the Kingston hyper X Savage DDR4 2666 Dual Rank with the Timing 13-15-15-39 1T on Ryzen. The Sticks are Old (buyed it with a 6700K) and Ryzen didn´t like them much -.- so i have to lower the cl to 14 and deaktivate Gear Down and Power Down to get it stable. But the results are pretty good. Aida64: read 41771 MB/s | write 41836 MB/s | copy 40966 MB/s and that are ok. In the Background my Sound Control Panel, Antivir Program, LGS runs.

very good video, I didn't know all of that ^^

So 4 single rank dimms in dual channel would be dual rank dual channel would allow for high speed tight timings and take advantage of interleaving. Am I right or did I listen wrong?

Totally off topic, been thinking of buying this motherboard for my mom to give her my old Phenom II 1090T, how is it? Your thoughts Buildzoid?

I know this is a very old video. Can i use Dual Rank at Dual Channel? Because almost every 2x8 kits are single rank

So... If CPU Memory Controller may work with 4 ranks, it's better to load it with 3 ranks max? 4 is too much load on controller and 2 is too low performance? I didn't thought about such mix (2R and 1R modules in same system to get... 3R). Also, it's still unclear how do i know how many ranks my CPU is support. I think i saw something in Intel documents, but i am not 100% sure (there are too much data). Time codes: 2:40 Triple Rank, Single Channel (2R E-Die + 1R E-Die).