Single channel or dual channel RAM? Aspire E5-476G

adminCC

My Aspire E5-476G supports 2400MHz of ram. I currently have 4gb installed and I bought an 8gb 2133MHz and planning to replace the 4gb with another 8gb 2133MHz. My question is, do you prefer your laptop having 2400MHz on single channel or having 16gb 2133 dual channel? Thanks in advance. Any suggestions will be a great help for me too 

brummyfan2

Hi,
Most probably you wouldn't notice the difference except in  benchmarks, it all depends on what type of work you do, more RAM is always useful if you run out of memory often.

adminCC

brummyfan2 said:

Hi,
Most probably you wouldn't notice the difference except in  benchmarks, it all depends on what type of work you do, more RAM is always useful if you run out of memory often.

Oh I see. So using a single channel 2400MHz is almost the same as using dual channel 2133MHz? Put aside the work stuffs, in terms of speed do they differ a lot or not so much? Cause I noticed that my motherboard can support 2400MHz but when I see my CPU specs (which is core i3-7130u) it only runs for 2133MHz and below. I read an info that the maximum speed that a ram can do is the minimum speed of your PC specs can handle that's why I bought the 2133MHz instead of 2400MHz. Using CPU-ID also indicates that my RAM max bandwidth is 2400 but the speed is 1200 (single channel) so I guess when you go for dual channel 2400 the max speed that can handle is 2133MHz right? I honestly don't know the exact idea of what I am doing cause I'm just basing it on some articles that I read. Can you explain it in your own understanding and tell me what am I missing? Thanks.           

brummyfan2

OK, for a 2400MHz RAM it will show the speed as 1200MHz in CPU-z, that's because the program shows the speed of the single Data transfer, DDR RAM modules are Double Data Rate, so the actual speed of the RAM is 2x1200MHz(2400MHz).
The speed of the memory modules is limited by the CPU, in your case, i3-7130u can handle memory speeds of up to 2133MHz, so installing a 2400MHz module will result in them downclocking to 2133MHz, so in my opinion you have done it correctly by buying 2133MHz modules but you are saying that CPU-z shows maximum bandwidth as 2400, could you please share the pictures of SPD tab and Memory tab of your CPU-z reading.
Intel® Core™ i3-7130U Processor (3M Cache, 2.70 GHz) Product Specifications