32 GB RAM Viable?

[Lil Ramen]

With RAM prices settling back to about $6 per GB, is 32 GB RAM (around $200) becoming viable for sub $1000 builds? 

Obviously the performance returns aren't as great, but as a futureproofing measure, is it?

[Skiiwee29]

You wont need more than 16gb of ram for gaming for many many years to come.. you likely wont need it before DDR5 comes. You will only want 32gb if you do heavy streaming or video encoding and such that requires it. 

[Lil Ramen]

3 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

You wont need more than 16gb of ram for gaming for many many years to come.. you likely wont need it before DDR5 comes. You will only want 32gb if you do heavy streaming or video encoding and such that requires it. 

Yeah for me video rendering I have used a max of 11 GB. Right now in my system (Phenom X4 645, 20 GB RAM, R7 250) I think 20GB is a bit much. I upgraded from 16 GB a few days ago. Now it 3 4 GB sticks and one 8 GB. 

[S.G.Rendel]

Even with heavy multitasking while gaming you won't be using that much RAM in a long time. It can help if you really use a lot of heavy duty programs all the time, but it really is a rare scenario. It's a lot more important to invest in more and faster VRAM and a better graphics card in general if you want to game, and in a more modern and faster processor if you are using the pc as a workstation. Of course, if you ARE using it as a workstation then the 32 gigs should not be discarded as an option, for it can help with some tasks.

[kb5zue]

When adding to existing ram or upgrading current ram, the best thing that you can do is check the mobo's website to see if the existing/new ram is on the QVL for that mobo.

 

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, Skiiwee29 said:

You wont need more than 16gb of ram for gaming for many many years to come.. you likely wont need it before DDR5 comes. You will only want 32gb if you do heavy streaming or video encoding and such that requires it. 

 

53 minutes ago, S.G.Rendel said:

Even with heavy multitasking while gaming you won't be using that much RAM in a long time. It can help if you really use a lot of heavy duty programs all the time, but it really is a rare scenario. It's a lot more important to invest in more and faster VRAM and a better graphics card in general if you want to game, and in a more modern and faster processor if you are using the pc as a workstation. Of course, if you ARE using it as a workstation then the 32 gigs should not be discarded as an option, for it can help with some tasks.

 

 

Really? Because when I start gaming, have Chrome open, etc it goes right up to 15GB of used memory. If someone were also streaming or had recording software going I could easily see it surpassing the 16GB buffer.

[S.G.Rendel]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

 

 

 

Really? Because when I start gaming, have Chrome open, etc it goes right up to 15GB of used memory. If someone were also streaming or had recording software going I could easily see it surpassing the 16GB buffer.

Well, that sounds strange but maybe you do use a lot more ram than me. I usually have two instances of chrome open with 15-25 tabs each while running wolfram mathematica, spotify, some pdf's and sometimes also a game, never saturating 16 gigabytes of ram. It might be possible that you are also running a lot of junk programs (or unused at least) in the background so I would look into that. I might be wrong though but it does sound strange.

[Kalm_Traveler]

I stuck 32gb in my mainstream rig so that I can run a Linux VM in it and not ever run into issues with the host Windows OS running out of RAM.

 

Probably unnecessary but I figured I'd rather spend more up front than have any chance of wishing I would have bought more and needing to replace 2 8gb sticks later on with these 2 16gb sticks.