Ok. I need some help with some basic RAM stuff here. I simply cant find an answear to this question without getting more confused by terminology, that is the word bank and what it signifies. Heres what I mean. A double sided stick or RAM has two banks right, one bank per side. For the sake of argument, I have a mobo with three physical DIMM slots, that is three banks. So do these two sets of banks mean the same thing? That is can I only install one double sided DIMM on this mobo and a sinlge sided DIMM (a total of three banks) or are the mobo banks and the DIMM module banks two seperate things with no relation to each other meaning I can install up to three double sided DIMMs with a total of six module banks? note: this is theoretical so the mobo has no max RAM limit. I'm not even sure If I understand the question now but if somebody knows what I'm getting at put me out of my misery would you!!!!!
You're correct in that a bank corresponds with one side of a DIMM. If the chipset supports 3 banks, you can install 3 single sided DIMMs, one double-sided and one single-sided DIMM as the maximum. However, a DIMM slot does not mean one bank. It can be two, but that depends on the number of DIMM slots and the number of banks the chipset supports. 4 is the lowest number I can recall, so if you install 2 double-sided DIMMs in the first two DIMM slots, the 3rd one can't be used. It might work, but not reliably.
AHH! all this talks about banks is driving me CRAZY Lol. yes you would have 6 banks if each was double sided. but about the RAM limits i don't think there is such thing as a MOBO with NO limit as Space wise i saw on newegg 6 intel boards and 2 amd boards that supported up to 32gb RAM!!!
Thanks for the response Big B. I read in this book I've got that a individual DIIMM slot on the mobo could also be called a bank, hence my confusion . Thanks for clearing that up for me
Sounds like a server-class board, not desktop. As far as the limit, he was just using a hypothetical situation to remove a variable. For the 32GB max, you'd need eight 4GB modules, which isn't exactly pocket change, plus they would likely need to be registered modules, which adds an extra expense.
