More memory or dual channel

[masteroc]

Hey guys, first time using freeNAS since back in o.7.

I bought a TS140 that I want to use as a NAS with 6x4TB Reds. It came with 4gb of ECC memory and I've been able to find 2x4gb more memory with brings me to one free spot for more memory. I've been offered an 8gb stick but with that it would mean that I would not have dual channel memory running in my system. So my question comes down to: should I buy one more 4gb stick and have 16gb dual channel or should I pick up the 8 (which is being sold to me at the same price as the 4) and have 20gb of single channel memory?

Performance is definitely an issue for me since I will want to stream 4k content from this box as well as have other clients accessing it.

Thanks

 

[Bidule0hm]

Streaming video content (even 4K) is a very light load (a copy of files is actually a higher load) and your bottleneck will probably be the network anyway (unless you have 10 Ge) :)

What size of pool you plan to have?

 

[masteroc]

Probably RaidZ2 of the 6x 4tb giving me an effective size of 16TB.

I just want this box to last a long time and don't want to have to upgrade anytime soon. So the most performance for the future is what I'm concerned with (e.g. When 8k comes out, etc)

 

[Bidule0hm]

Well, then I'd take the 4 GB stick to have dual channel ;)

Make sure it's exactly the same model as the 3 others to avoid some problems :)

Well, I don't think we'll see 8K as 4K is already pretty much useless... Maybe not in fact, manufacturers will do anything to make more money :P

 

[Ericloewe]

More memory is almost always better than faster memory.

 

[masteroc]

Hmmmm, its a hard choice. Something just doesn't sit right with me having single channel memory though. Any tie breakers wanna help out here?

 

[HoneyBadger]

More memory. The small gains of dual channel memory are far outweighed by the additional 4GB.

Plus, if you're thinking of the future, you'll want to use the highest density RAM you can in order to cram as much as possible in there.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I just want this box to last a long time and don't want to have to upgrade anytime soon.

Sell the 4GB sticks and buy 2 8GB sticks.

 

[marbus90]

Bad news for you, the TS140 doesn't support 6 HDDs.

Send it back and get a TS440 70AQ000YUX which supports 8-11 HDDs instead of the 5 of the TS140. You'll need these hotswap trays as well.