Computer Hardware Help → RAM slot position matter?

In my new Asus Z97-A MB it says in the manual that if you have only 2 sticks of ram then place them in slots 2 & 4 instead of 1 & 2. I found that odd because I was always under the impression that RAM slots must be populated in order starting from 1 to 4. Of course if you have pairs then they have to go in odd or even but I always thought you had to start with slots 1 & 2 first then 3 & 4.
This does kind of help with heat and space with the CPU heatsink though so I like it.

But my question is; does this go for all modern boards, or is this unique to this board or manufacturer or chipset?

You should do whatever the manual says. If it says to do 2/4 instead of 1/3, start with 2/4.

DO NOT do something like 1/2 or you'll be running single channel memory.

Ya, and for that mobo just blame weird numbering on asus.

normally it would be 1/3 then 2/4 but clearly they are doing the numbering oddly.

I had someone ask the very same question here only 2 days ago.
There is not a generic answer, as mentioned already, you have to go to the manual and check the specifics for the motherboard.

Heres a generic answer.

if it has 4 slots then get 4 sticks of ram.
bam then you don't have to worry at all.

might not be the most practical method but it works.
and if you think dealing with 4 slots can get confusing well on my DL580G5 it can have upto 32 sticks of ram (16 directly on the board and 16 via risers)

you should see the crazy number/lettering of those slots and the way you're suppose to populate them.

if you need that much RAM, most people don't. Also, using all of the slots will often cause the MB to run the RAM at a slower speed, thus reducing performance.

I was just surprised to find that in the manual. I remember way back when ram slots HAD to be populated from first to last or the system would not boot. Granted that was a very long time ago but it stuck in memory.

I now the read the manual of another PC I am working on it and it too says that I can populate the farthest slots first if desired as long as you keep similar sticks in odd or even slots as that is what constitutes a "bay".

Should help to reduce heat transfer to RAM from chipset heatsink in this particular board very much.

To expand a little bit more, if the mainboard has only a single channel then it does not matter which slots are populated nor does it matter in what order memory dimms of different sizes are plugged in.
Personally - I always put the fastest memory furthest from the cpu socket and the slowest up front. I would also put a single dimm closest to the cpu socket as that sometimes helped with system stability. (P3, socket 7, and earlier)

If you have multiple memory channels you want at least one dimm on every channel so you get the maxiumum available bandwidth.

In general, for the best system stability use all chips of the same speed and size and preferably from the same manufacturer.

Depends on the mobo and other things.

but in my experience its very rarely true. (and I always check with a program to see what speed the memory is actually running at.)

that oddity of full slots equaling slower memory is only when its doing some crap on the board to add slots that the memory controller wasn't meant to serve.