Fastest 256GB RAM with the TR 3970X

[tinco]

Hi, at my office we're doing photogrammetry, and it's pretty CPU and RAM intensive. I'm assembling a system based around the AMD 3970X and the ASRock TRX40 Creator. We need (at least) 256GB RAM, so I was looking at the QVL and I noticed that for the corsair modules it says it only supports 2 or 2/4 in the column "DIMM Socket Support". Does that mean I can fit only two modules in the motherboard?

Anyone have experience with exceeding the "DIMM Socket Support" column? Does it just not boot, or does it not work at the advertised clock speeds? It does have 8 module support for the Samsung M378A4G43MB1-CTD, so it does seem like they were testing for it.

edit: I found some better google results by googling for just "ASRock DIMM Socket Support". Consensus seems to be that it just means it wasn't tested. But it is suspect that they tested a quad module set and only list that they support 2 DIMM's.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

QVLs are usually just a list of what the vendor has actually tried and verified working - they may have only had four of those DIMMs available for testing.

Neither their specifications page nor the manual doesn't give any indication that there's any severe memory limitations, so it sounds like you could happily install DIMMs of any supported speed and have them work in quad-channel mode. Don't take my word for it though, I've not followed threadripper memory support closely.

They do state though that 256GB of RAM is the maximum supported, so when you say you need "at least" that much, bear in mind that you may not be able to add more. Here's hoping AMD see sense and allow the next gen of Threadrippers to use RDIMMs...

 

[tinco]

Thanks! We're actually running 4 concurrent processes that each need about 64GB. If it turns out they need more, perhaps the hardware will be slightly less effective, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. It might turn out that we'll go the EPYC route for the rest of the nodes if this doesn't work out.