Question about RAM

[tacotiklah]

Use pcpartpicker.com instead since it does essentially what the amazon wishlist does, but across multiple pc parts sites. Plus they have a pretty good community there that can help you with stuff if you run into trouble.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Use pcpartpicker.com instead since it does essentially what the amazon wishlist does, but across multiple pc parts sites. Plus they have a pretty good community there that can help you with stuff if you run into trouble.

It's just for fun mainly, plus if I was seriously considering the build I'd rather buy all the parts from one place at once to cut down on postage costs and needing someone at home for recieving the parcels for me while I'm at work. I do get why people use PPP though, it's a handy way to put builds together and a way to get the best price possible.

 

[tacotiklah]

Even for fun, I use pcpartpicker. Reason being that it's easier to do budget constraints on your build ideas, which makes them more challenging to do. That way you have to figure out what the best items for the price point are. If I didn't mess around with that, I wouldn't have found out about this awesome CPU:
AMD Athlon X4 860K Quad-Core 3.7 GHz Socket FM2+ 95W AD860KXBJABOX Desktop Processor (BLACK EDITION) - Newegg.com

It's a Kaveri CPU, which means that it has great built in graphics, which can be run in crossfire with R9 270X and higher discrete AMD GPUs for a bit of a bump in frames per second. And it only costs $80. It's an awesome budget CPU for gaming.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Even for fun, I use pcpartpicker. Reason being that it's easier to do budget constraints on your build ideas, which makes them more challenging to do. That way you have to figure out what the best items for the price point are. If I didn't mess around with that, I wouldn't have found out about this awesome CPU:
AMD Athlon X4 860K Quad-Core 3.7 GHz Socket FM2+ 95W AD860KXBJABOX Desktop Processor (BLACK EDITION) - Newegg.com

It's a Kaveri CPU, which means that it has great built in graphics, which can be run in crossfire with R9 270X and higher discrete AMD GPUs. And it only costs $80. It's an awesome budget CPU for gaming.

Will do, have a good night/day

 

[Pav]

Tbqh, I'd be surprised if you ever needed to upgrade to 16gb just for gaming. I like to run all of my games at max settings and I don't think I've ever surpassed 4.5gb of RAM use with any game. 16gb would certainly future-proof your build a little more but you won't actually need that much unless you're doing something like design or A/V editing. Gaming is all about a fast processor and powerful graphics card.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Tbqh, I'd be surprised if you ever needed to upgrade to 16gb just for gaming. I like to run all of my games at max settings and I don't think I've ever surpassed 4.5gb of RAM use with any game. 16gb would certainly future-proof your build a little more but you won't actually need that much unless you're doing something like design or A/V editing. Gaming is all about a fast processor and powerful graphics card.

Considering I'm saving up for a build that consists of a gtx 980 ti with a Skylake i5, I'd say that 16GB pretty soon would go towards future proofing for at least a year or two.

 

[Thanatopsis]

Yeah, no problem replacing it in the future. However most motherboards have 4 DIMM slots so you have the option of just adding another 2x4GB to upgrade to 16GB in the future. Depending on what you plan on doing with the system, 8 may very well be enough for you. I had 8 for a while until a few months ago and it would have been adequate if I weren't the type of person to do things like have many browser windows open with many tabs in each window while gaming on a second monitor and it still wasn't that bad with 8. Now that I've upgraded I don't think I've ever had more than 10-12GB in use at once. I saw far more of a difference by getting an SSD. Not sure what you planned on getting for storage but if it's in your budget try to go solid state for at least your OS.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Yeah, no problem replacing it in the future. However most motherboards have 4 DIMM slots so you have the option of just adding another 2x4GB to upgrade to 16GB in the future. Depending on what you plan on doing with the system, 8 may very well be enough for you. I had 8 for a while until a few months ago and it would have been adequate if I weren't the type of person to do things like have many browser windows open with many tabs in each window while gaming on a second monitor and it still wasn't that bad with 8. Now that I've upgraded I don't think I've ever had more than 10-12GB in use at once. I saw far more of a difference by getting an SSD. Not sure what you planned on getting for storage but if it's in your budget try to go solid state for at least your OS.

I'm going for either a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO or a Seagate 1TB SSHD.

 

[flint757]

Modern OS's do a much better job at managing your resources based on your hardware than they have in the past IMO. It scales nicely if you have more or less RAM and just adjust where it applies system resources.

After many, many years of using computers the only time I've ever run into a bottleneck with my RAM is when working in Photoshop (if I max out what it's allowed to use) and Resolve, or any other video production software. You can go through a ton of RAM and hard drive space quick in those programs, especially if you're caching a lot of footage. I don't go crazy with the effects when I record and if I do it's before the computer that I apply them so I've never really run into any bottleneck problems in that department.

Also, I've had quite a few sticks of RAM go bad on me over the years and all of them came from supposedly matched pairs. I always buy matching sticks (RAM is cheap now so why not), but I usually just buy the singles since the price comes out better. Typically no problems have risen form doing so.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Modern OS's do a much better job at managing your resources based on your hardware than they have in the past IMO. It scales nicely if you have more or less RAM and just adjust where it applies system resources.

After many, many years of using computers the only time I've ever run into a bottleneck with my RAM is when working in Photoshop (if I max out what it's allowed to use) and Resolve, or any other video production software. You can go through a ton of RAM and hard drive space quick in those programs, especially if you're caching a lot of footage. I don't go crazy with the effects when I record and if I do it's before the computer that I apply them so I've never really run into any bottleneck problems in that department.

Also, I've had quite a few sticks of RAM go bad on me over the years and all of them came from supposedly matched pairs. I always buy matching sticks (RAM is cheap now so why not), but I usually just buy the singles since the price comes out better. Typically no problems have risen form doing so.

In the UK, it's a little more expensive buying ram in single sticks. On the websites I use anyway.

 

[tacotiklah]

Modern OS's do a much better job at managing your resources based on your hardware than they have in the past IMO. It scales nicely if you have more or less RAM and just adjust where it applies system resources.

After many, many years of using computers the only time I've ever run into a bottleneck with my RAM is when working in Photoshop (if I max out what it's allowed to use) and Resolve, or any other video production software. You can go through a ton of RAM and hard drive space quick in those programs, especially if you're caching a lot of footage. I don't go crazy with the effects when I record and if I do it's before the computer that I apply them so I've never really run into any bottleneck problems in that department.

Also, I've had quite a few sticks of RAM go bad on me over the years and all of them came from supposedly matched pairs. I always buy matching sticks (RAM is cheap now so why not), but I usually just buy the singles since the price comes out better. Typically no problems have risen form doing so.

I've run into bottlenecks with both RAM and CPU when it comes to gaming and VSTs before. I remember on an old laptop I had, I couldn't run more than 6 VSTs at one time or my whole DAW would freeze up and I'd have to restart the program. It was awful.

 

[Thanatopsis]

I'm going for either a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO or a Seagate 1TB SSHD.

Never used a Seagate SSD but have owned many Seagate physical hard drives in the past with never a problem. Definitely nothing wrong with them but you'll see a major performance improvement going with the 850 EVO. THe 500GB 850 EVO I got a few days ago is the best upgrade I've ever made. Now that I see the difference, I plan on getting another SSD(albeit a cheaper, slower one) for all my games and applications. Going forward I'm only going to use physical HDD's strictly for storing my music, movies, and pictures.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Never used a Seagate SSD but have owned many Seagate physical hard drives in the past with never a problem. Definitely nothing wrong with them but you'll see a major performance improvement going with the 850 EVO. THe 500GB 850 EVO I got a few days ago is the best upgrade I've ever made. Now that I see the difference, I plan on getting another SSD(albeit a cheaper, slower one) for all my games and applications. Going forward I'm only going to use physical HDD's strictly for storing my music, movies, and pictures.

The Seagate SSHD is supposedly the best of both, Seagate claims it has the speed of an SSD with the storage space of an HDD.

 

[Thanatopsis]

The Seagate SSHD is supposedly the best of both, Seagate claims it has the speed of an SSD with the storage space of an HDD.

Ahh, I didn't realize you meant one of the hybrid drives. While they might give a big performance boost over a traditional hard drive, you definitely won't see the performance of a strictly solid state drive. I was just reading a couple articles and checking out some benchmarks and it looks like you get at best a little less than half the transfer rates of an SSD. I definitely recommend the Samsung 850 EVO drives though. I've only had my 500GB M.2 for about a week an am loving the thing. Even programs that are on my 1TB WD Caviar Black seem to run faster than before. I'm amazed at home responsive absolutely everything is. However I also did a clean install of Windows 10 when I got the new drive and that always helps. Pretty happy with the new OS too.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

Ahh, I didn't realize you meant one of the hybrid drives. While they might give a big performance boost over a traditional hard drive, you definitely won't see the performance of a strictly solid state drive. I was just reading a couple articles and checking out some benchmarks and it looks like you get at best a little less than half the transfer rates of an SSD. I definitely recommend the Samsung 850 EVO drives though. I've only had my 500GB M.2 for about a week an am loving the thing. Even programs that are on my 1TB WD Caviar Black seem to run faster than before. I'm amazed at home responsive absolutely everything is. However I also did a clean install of Windows 10 when I got the new drive and that always helps. Pretty happy with the new OS too.

While I'm not expecting absolute SSD speeds out of it, it's better than nothing. I'm glad someone on here likes windows 10 as that's what I'm going for. I'm going to get the retail usb drive version because it's easie than having to spend extra on an optical drive.

 

[flint757]

If the Seagate SSHD is anything like the Western digital Raptor be prepared for it to be a bit noisy when going full speed. I haven't done any research on it, but if it is still a hard disk drive then they get those higher rates by making the disk spin very fast, which increases heat, noise, and raises the risk of it dying (since hard drive failure is associated with the plates destabilizing while spinning essentially).

Also, they're the same version. In one case you're saving the mount to a USB drive and the other to a disk, but you can do either or when installing 10. In fact, I think you can download the files for installing Windows for free as they check whether you paid once you type in the serial number after it has installed.

 

[ZombieLloyd]

If the Seagate SSHD is anything like the Western digital Raptor be prepared for it to be a bit noisy when going full speed. I haven't done any research on it, but if it is still a hard disk drive then they get those higher rates by making the disk spin very fast, which increases heat, noise, and raises the risk of it dying (since hard drive failure is associated with the plates destabilizing while spinning essentially).

Also, they're the same version. In one case you're saving the mount to a USB drive and the other to a disk, but you can do either or when installing 10. In fact, I think you can download the files for installing Windows for free as they check whether you paid once you type in the serial number after it has installed.

Thanks for the info. Sorry for a short response, fallout 4 is unlocked in the UK for ps4 so I'm playing it. Finally.

 

[Rev2010]

I know the OP has already said he's not going to mix sticks but I just wanted to add my input. Yes you can mix brands and types of memory, but no it's not recommended as TacoTiklah pointed out. Reason mostly comes down to mismatched Cas latency timings and voltages, not the memory speed. So yes, while you can successfully mix memory sticks and many motherboards can auto adjust it can still cause problems and no one wants to deal with memory crashes and losing one's work from a sudden one. So it's best to stick with the same type and brand.

That said, I'll also agree with 8gb being just fine for DAW/audio work. I recently upgraded and money isn't at all an issue and I went with 8gb. I'm an IT professional for a living and I think many go overboard often without reason. Yes if you're gaming, doing 3D animation, or if for audio you are running very large orchestral sample libraries with a very large number of orchestral sections then yes you will likely want to go with more memory. But having done electronic music and metal I've never seen a need for more than 8 and got along perfectly fine with even 3gb for years - though with 3gb I wasn't able to load some full Metal Foundry Superior kits at 24bit sample depth.


Rev.

 

[Thanatopsis]

While I'm not expecting absolute SSD speeds out of it, it's better than nothing. I'm glad someone on here likes windows 10 as that's what I'm going for. I'm going to get the retail usb drive version because it's easie than having to spend extra on an optical drive.

Yeah, definitely liking 10 so far. I skipped over 8/8.1 IMO every other version of Windows is garbage, 98, XP, 7, & 10 are good, ME, Vista, and 8 are crap. My only gripe was that I preferred the Windows 7 Start Menu but that was easily rectified with this free app called Classic Shell.

If the Seagate SSHD is anything like the Western digital Raptor be prepared for it to be a bit noisy when going full speed. I haven't done any research on it, but if it is still a hard disk drive then they get those higher rates by making the disk spin very fast, which increases heat, noise, and raises the risk of it dying (since hard drive failure is associated with the plates destabilizing while spinning essentially).

That shouldn't be an issue since the reason the Raptor is noisy is the 10k RPM spindle speed. The Seagate drives(other than the slower 4GB) are 7200PM