MSI Global English Forum (2024)

I have a MSI Carbon Z690 Wifi motherboard and 2 sticks of 16GB Kingston DDR5 5200mhz RAM.

The RAMs are installed at DIMMA2 and DIMMB2 slot as per the MSI user manual. However HWiNFO 64 & CPU Z show that I am running Quad Channel instead of Dual.

Is this normal?

Yes, it is. This is one of the DDR5 innovations. Instead of one 64-bit channel per module, on DDR5 it's split into two 32-bit channels (+8 bits ECC) per module, for more efficient memory access.

The mainboard makers like MSI are still calling it dual-channel for their Z690 boards though, because they only mean how the slots on the board are organized, not the modules internally.

These two independent channels per module might also be part of the reason why using four DDR5 modules on a Z690 boards worsens the memory system's parameters so much. The attainable frequency drops drastically with four modules, much more percentagewise than on DDR4, which i mention in my thread about RAM as i'm sure you've seen.

This deterioration with four modules is so drastic that the conclusion could be: DDR5 motherboards should come with only 2 dimm slots as standard (Youtube)

Well if working out memory was not already confusing now this

Thank you @citay for the clarification and detailed explanation.

I had the assumption that:
1 RAM = Single Channel
2 RAMs (at designated slots) = Dual Channel
4 RAMs (at designated slots) = Dual or Quad Channel

Glad I learnt something new today

ykchias158602de said:

I have a MSI Carbon Z690 Wifi motherboard and 2 sticks of 16GB Kingston DDR5 5200mhz RAM.

The RAMs are installed at DIMMA2 and DIMMB2 slot as per the MSI user manual. However HWiNFO 64 & CPU Z show that I am running Quad Channel instead of Dual.

Is this normal?

Click to expand...

Hi,
Any updates with MSI Z690 Carbon board and DUAL/QUAD channel DDR5 memory setup? I have 4 x 16gb modules ddr5 5600mhz Kingston..... So.... is it ok to use them in quad configuration OR do I need toexchange that for two 32GB ram in order to get higher frequencies on my Carbon MB...? Tnx!

citay said:

You could still call it that, because usually that's meant to indicate the organization of the slots on the board. So i think we'll still call it dual-channel when there's two modules in the proper slots. As far as the board goes, that's correct, and that's all that matters in most cases. Of course there has to be a side note about the "two channels per module" on DDR5 in order to explain the "Quad channel" text in CPU-Z and such, because relatively few buyers might know about this detail of DDR5.

Click to expand...

Hi,
Any updates with MSI Z690 Carbon board and DUAL/QUAD channel DDR5 memory setup? I have 4 x 16gb modules ddr5 5600mhz Kingston.....
So.... is it ok to use them in quad configuration OR do I need to exchange that for two 32GB ram sticks in order to get higher frequencies on my Carbon MB...? Tnx!

Four modules with DDR5 doesn't like high RAM frequencies at all. The signal quality degrades too much when using four DDR5 modules. I wrote about this in my RAM thread under point 2).

You will never reach the DDR5-5600 XMP speed with four modules. On a four-DIMM (four-slot) mainboard, with

modules, you can already get problems with stability around DDR5-6000.
So you can imagine what will happen with four modules. You will be lucky to reach around DDR5-5000, but most likely you will be stuck in the mid-4000 range.

So on top of the IMC (memory controller), the board itself becomes another limiting factor with DDR5, since the signal quality needs to be so much cleaner now. Often times, the good enough signal quality may only be reached with a two-DIMM (two-slot) board, which eliminates the signal reflections of the empty slots. Once you populate all four slots on a four-DIMM board, it all goes completely down the drain with DDR5, it doesn't like that at all, further demonstrating how much of a "diva" DDR5 is at the moment. The situation could improve with further DDR5 board/CPU/RAM iterations.

So the RAM itself can do DDR5-5600 fine, it's the other components of the memory system causing the limit here: The IMC and the board, with its RAM slot layout / PCB / BIOS, and of course the stress and electrical worsening that four modules cause for the memory system. To have any chance of running DDR5-5600 XMP, you need to use two modules only. To run DDR5-6000+, certainly starting around DDR5-6200 or so, you even need to use two modules only on a two-DIMM mainboard.

Also, you need to question if you really need 64 GB of RAM, see my RAM thread under point 3). Most people will not need that much unless they use special software that requires it.

Guide for men speeds here