RAM speed or capacity?

[heartlessglint1]

So I'm upgrading my PC from a 4th gen I5 to the newest. With this I need to upgrade my ram. Currently I've managed to find a good deal on 32gb of RAM at 2400 or 16gb at 3300 at about the same price and was wondering which would be the best option. I mainly use my PC for gaming, Though often do have the internet with a few tabs and something downloading too.

 

Build will be:

I5 8600K (will be overclocking on water)

Asus prime Z370

GTX 980ti

1SSD

2HDD

 

Thanks for any advise

[chiller15]

Capacity. Always capacity. RAM speeds have very little impact on gaming performance. If you had 16GB 2400MHz and 16GB 3300MHz, you would not notice the difference. At best you may get a 1fps improvement.

[Tartandy]

RAM speed has not got much of an effect on intel based systems, certainly not in the same way as it does with AMD builds.

 

Also ask yourself really, do you actually need 32GB RAM to play games? Nope. Not even a little. I'd say just save yourself some money and stick with 16GB 2400MHz, especially with DRAM pricing being absoluetly bananas still.

[AskTJ]

I would go for the capacity on the Intel build.

[Pixel5]

for what you will do with it anything above 16GB will not matter so capacity is not really important.

 

Ram speed also has very little impact on games so just get the cheapest 16GB kit you can get.

[Jurrunio]

Capacity, but tops at 16GB for a gaming build. I always burn through memory by using Chrome and multiple tabs (say 20?), but I still havent used more than 12GB yet.

 

After getting 16GB, it's time to get high frequency which is very useful in keeping high frame rates stable.

 

Dont buy the Z370-P,  quite bad.

[Amazonsucks]

Capacity when discussing variations of the same type of RAM like DDR4 x vs DDR4 x. When you get to HBM vs DDR4 it becomes a different story for some applications, but for a desktop just get more RAM rather than faster RAM.

 

I wouldnt get the cheapest. Id get whatever is good quality and hopefully stable. That wont be the most expensive though.

 

When RAM was cheap in 2012 i got 16GB for my desktop, and then 32GB in 2016 for my current system. Now that RAM is so expensive 2x8GB might be enough for a while. If you have 4 DIMM slots you can always get another 2x8GB if you need it.

 

And while you dont need 32GB for most games, you can use over 16 in games like ARK, since Windows will use more if you have more to keep things in memory and therefore much lower latency. Especially if you have a bunch of other stuff running in the background.