The Qubes OS recommended specs say 16GB’s of RAM is recommended, but doesn’t say single channel or dual channel. Is there a benefit to one setup over the other with Qubes? I have one 16GB DDR5 stick and was wondering if I should have bought two 8GB sticks instead, but at current RAM prices, I’d like to be sure.
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I’ve tried both ways and it doesn’t make much/any noticeable difference to me. I think dual channel is more a gaming thing.
Due to RAM AI BS, I have tried mismatched dual channel (speed and size) as well as single slot. Supposedly AMD CPU with integrated GPU needs dual channel for graphics performance but it’s been fine. However I do not watch lots of high def videos.
The only thing memory related that has caused problems was when I OCed memory speed on a mismatched speed pair
I did notice the install was a little faster using single 5600 ram vs dual mismatched brought down to 4800
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Only you personally have sufficient context for what your requirements are. 32gb is a reasonable minimum requirement (in my opinion). Generally 64gb is the recommended amount, depending on who you talk to and what their team does.
I have 128gb in the machine I run Qubes on. I had 64gb but I kept seeing these notifications popping up that I must construct additional pylons.
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I think documentation should be updated and “recommended RAM: 16GB” should be changed to “recommended minimum RAM: 16GB”
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There are a few things to consider here. Like with any computer, RAM usage is fully dependent on what you want to do with it. If you only want to run two or three qubes simultaneously. then 16GB is plenty. If you want to run several qubes at once, then 32 is a good size. If you’re compiling or running several browsers, then you probably need 64 or more. I have machines ranging from 16 to 64, and that’s comfortable, but I’m sure I’d quickly grow to use 128 or 256 if I had it.
I think it would be a good idea to have three columns, like @KitsuneNoBaka mentioned with Minimum, Minimum Recommended, and Recommended (being 8, 16, and 32 respectively).
The big problem is how Qubes is “supposed” to be used. For security, you should separate everything into its own qube, which guzzles RAM and makes life hard if you aren’t using a recent CPU (meltdown, spectre v1/v2, rowhammer, etc). If your threat model allows for it and you want to run a bunch at once, then 64 is a healthy recommended minimum. A more reasonable path, if a little annoying, is to just run less things simultaneously.
The issue with making 32GB the recommendation is that it puts off new users before they even start, since they may assume that it won’t run well without 32GB, when in reality 8GB runs Qubes without issue, if you don’t run too much at once.
TL;DR: 16GB is a perfectly reasonable recommendation when you think about it.
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