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Originally Posted by Dngrsone
Computer motherboards tend to have memory slots in groups of two for the simple reason that a matched pair of 'sticks' can operate faster when in matching slots. On laptops, it's usually only two slots, but on desktop systems it's generally four, though I have seen lower-end systems with only a pair and higher-end ones with six or even eight slots.
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As an additional consideration, you want matching RAM speeds overall if possible. RAM has steadily increased in how fast it can be accessed, to keep up with faster CPUs, and it's possible to have RAM sticks of different speeds that can be installed and work in the same machine. RAM sticks of the same speed should be installed in matching slots for best performance, and system speed will be limited to that of the
slowest RAM in the system. So a little research is needed to see what speed RAM is required. (There's no benefit to getting faster RAM than needed, but there is a cost to having slower RAM than the system can use, even if it works.)
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I had a problem with wearing out Flash memory sticks some ten years ago (here's a good idea: don't run a portable app on one that will use the drive as a cache). I actually still have a Kingston from back then which I had replaced some four or five times through warranty (back when the warranty was unlimited). The number of permissible writes is much higher nowadays, but I find that I don't need to worry about wearing out a thumb drive anymore because I just don't use them as much these days.
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Flash thumb drives are a somewhat different matter than SSDs, though the underlying technology is similar. In the early days, people worried about SSDs wearing out. These days, it's not a likely issue.
I haven't had a thumbdrive wear out, but my usage tends to be read only. They are archival storage for less used files, and tend to be read from far more than written to. I have a seven port USB hub in my desktop with an assortment of thumb drives from 32GB to 128 GB holding various data, each dedicated to particular types of storage.
Agreed, for portable apps, I'd take pains to see that cache wasn't on the thumbdrive the apps were on.
On the desktop, I have 8GB RAM installed (the max this particular machine will take.) I found an open source RAMdisk driver for 64bit Windows, and dedicated 512MB to a ramdisk seen as Z: I have Firefox place its cache there, and have the Firefox profile on the ramdisk as well. To the extent feasible, other caches and temp files are directed to the ramdrive as well. A lesser motive is reducing writes to the SSD. The bigger win is simply better overall performance. (It's possible to define and use a ramdrive in Linux, too, though I haven't at this point.)
And I discovered an interesting quirk. My machine is USB2, and doesn't support USB3. For my purposes, this isn't a limitation - the stuff I do doesn't require USB3 speeds accessing external peripherals. But when I got a 128GB thumbdrive, it was USB3 because it didn't come in a USB2 model. I use it as my Calibre Library mirror, and update it with a file sync utility when I make changes in the master on HD. The previous drive used for this had been a 64GB USB2. Mirror operations were a
lot faster on the USB3 drive, even though the underlying system is USB2. It was faster media, and could be accessed and updated faster than the USB2 drive it replaced. The limit had been media speed on the older drive, not bandwidth of the USB interface.
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Dennis