Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 195 posts

Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

#31

Post by embedding-shape »

spacecadet wrote: post #7
FpUser wrote: post #5

First time in my life I hear about fake RAM

Many kit builders with flashy PCs are only running 32gb. If you look at datasets like Steams, most people are still on 16 and 32. Hell 4% are still on 8!

Meanwhile I moved platform from AM4 at exactly the wrong moment, and downgraded RAM (temporarily, I hope) from 192GB to 96GB and feel like I'm missing half my workspace when I need it.

Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

#35

Post by p_ing »

exabrial wrote: post #23
RobotToaster wrote: post #10

I don't get it. Isn't 2x8gb faster than 1x16gb since it will run in dual channel? And shouldn't smaller capacity sticks be cheaper since they can use lower density chips?

Up to a certain point and It’s actually very dependent on the CPU. Take Epyc processors. On certain ones, after certain RAM amount, populating all the slots causes the cpu to kick the RAM speed to a lower tier. You’re then limited to capacities of two sticks. Weird, but it has to do with power requirements. Abutting above the threshold had to be buffered, which increases latency.

It's the signal integrity and applies to desktop class boards, as well. A fully populated four DIMM Intel or AMD board will need to run at a slower mega transfer rate than a two DIMM board (or a four DIMM board with only two DIMMs populated)

Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

#37

Post by Sharlin »

Simulacra wrote: post #22

I'm confused, could someone help me clarify: is this just one stick of RAM, and one stick of absolutely nothing, purely for aesthetics? I can't even see inside my CPU, why would I care if there's an empty slot? Why would I pay for a piece of plastic to fill that slot that doesn't do anything? From the read, it seems like… A scam?

I'd estimate that most consumer PC cases sold these days have a glass side panel, and have had for a while.

Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

#38

Post by Sharlin »

philjohn wrote: post #24
Simulacra wrote: post #22

I'm confused, could someone help me clarify: is this just one stick of RAM, and one stick of absolutely nothing, purely for aesthetics? I can't even see inside my CPU, why would I care if there's an empty slot? Why would I pay for a piece of plastic to fill that slot that doesn't do anything? From the read, it seems like… A scam?

Meanwhile lots of people in the PC building community have cases with glass panels on the side, and go to a lot of effort to make the inside look a certain way. This includes things like custom sleeved cables, perfect cable management, RGB on various things. I also have a glass panneled side to my computer, but the only RGB on it is on the graphics card waterblock, everything else is just jet black (fans, ZMT water c…

I'm not in the market for LED bling (though I guess I might've been back when I was 15), but the neat cable management of today's cases definitely appeals to my sense of aesthetics, compared to the terrible mess of the yesteryear.

Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

#40

Post by bombcar »

scotty79 wrote: post #3
sidewndr46 wrote: post #2

This article seems a bit dramatic in it's title? People have purchased "blank" RAM for years for the aesthetic of it. I do not personally see the point, but I also don't have motherboards with unpopulated RAM slots. If a company wants to sell a kit that is 50/50, I am not sure that is actually a problem.

First time hearing about this, it's pretty dramatic for me. I grew up in times when computers were off-white and we liked it.

I remember being annoyed that it was hard to get the CDROM burner to match the case if you weren’t standard beige, and when black/clear came out it looked so bad for awhile!
Post reply on HN