Upgrade Question - Storage Vs. Memory

[DanielNS84]

Hey everyone,

I have a little extra in my PC upgrade budget this month and was looking at the falling prices on two items and was wondering what I should get first:

Additional 16GB DDR4 3200 CL14: Amazon Link

Additional 1TB 970 Evo 1TB: Amazon Link

 

Strangely enough I was planning on getting one or the other and the prices have converged to be almost identical! I already have 16GB of that exact memory and am unsure if there are performance gains to be had here since I don't do a lot of heavy memory usage yet. With the SSD I've started to install more of my games to my existing drive and have noticed a VERY dramatic difference vs. my RAID drives so that is also a very attractive option. Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

 

Edit: Full current specs are in my signature.

[Firewrath9]

Id get the ssd imo.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly I would go with the 970 personally. Have never even been close to using all 16gb of ram in my rig and I usually have alot of things open at once. 

[DanielNS84]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I would go with the 970 personally. Have never even been close to using all 16gb of ram in my rig and I usually have alot of things open at once. 

 

7 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

Id get the ssd imo.

Yeah I'm thinking that may be the way to go as much as I'd like to put off reinstalling my games to it...do you guys think that the prices will keep going down for these (In the very near future) or are they close to the bottom already?

Edit: Also, do you guys think the 2TB version is too overpriced at $500+?

[Mira Yurizaki]

RAM doesn't help you unless you're running out of it.

[SupaKomputa]

16gb is enough for now. 32gb won't speed up the pc.

get the ssd.

[Brooksie359]

Just now, DanielNS84 said:

 

Yeah I'm thinking that may be the way to go as much as I'd like to put off reinstalling my games to it...do you guys think that the prices will keep going down for these (In the very near future) or are they close to the bottom already?

All the major players have stopped increasing production of nand because they said their was a surplus. That was a month or so ago and I wouldn't plan on it getting any cheaper tbh. I am thinking about picking up the same thing myself because It is a really good deal and I would rather get it now and have it get cheaper than not get it now and have it increace in price. 

[Altruist]

Ram will only help if you don't have enough, get the ssd.

[TetraSky]

18 minutes ago, DanielNS84 said:

I already have 16GB of that exact memory and am unsure if there are performance gains to be had here since I don't do a lot of heavy memory usage yet.

You yourself are already giving arguments as to why you don't need an additional 16GB of RAM. You have 16GB, you don't do anything that would require more RAM... so this is a no brainer.

Get the SSD, it will benefit you a lot more than an extra 16GB of RAM that won't even get used.

[asus killer]

 

 

Do you need more ram or more storage? that's what is important

 

you should buy what you need, and if you don't need either don't buy either.

 

[DanielNS84]

1 minute ago, asus killer said:

 

 

Do you need more ram or more storage? that's what is important

 

you should buy what you need, and if you don't need either don't buy either.

 

The memory is hard to justify but then again so is the rest of my system I guess. I don't "need" the storage but even with my RAID I get like 400-500MB/s read speeds on the drives currently holding most of my games whereas the ones on my OS drive (My current 970 Evo 1TB) are closer to 4GB/s and the difference shows. Essentially I could either get the 1TB Evo now and the memory in a month or so or I can push the memory down the road like 6 months and go all out on the 2TB Evo. Basically I'm just wondering what you guys think of the current pricing and whether it seems like an unreasonable price vs. the benefits.

[asus killer]

7 minutes ago, DanielNS84 said:

The memory is hard to justify but then again so is the rest of my system I guess. I don't "need" the storage but even with my RAID I get like 400-500MB/s read speeds on the drives currently holding most of my games whereas the ones on my OS drive (My current 970 Evo 1TB) are closer to 4GB/s and the difference shows. Essentially I could either get the 1TB Evo now and the memory in a month or so or I can push the memory down the road like 6 months and go all out on the 2TB Evo. Basically I'm just wondering what you guys think of the current pricing and whether it seems like an unreasonable price vs. the benefits.

both RAM and SSD prices have come down recently, more on SSD for sure. Personally i would hold out for Black Friday (that's what i'm doing myself  ), maybe i just missed a good deal lately but i still believe in the power of BF 

[DanielNS84]

6 minutes ago, asus killer said:

both RAM and SSD prices have come down recently, more on SSD for sure. Personally i would hold out for Black Friday (that's what i'm doing myself  ), maybe i just missed a good deal lately but i still believe in the power of BF 

Okay then, I guess I can wait a day or so! I really want more NVMe goodness though! I installed Hitman 2 and it didn't download correctly from Steam (Couldn't play past the 2nd level) and when I reinstalled it I threw it on the NVMe since I enjoyed the game so much...level load times went from like a full minute to sub-10 seconds for even the largest levels and I definitely want more of that!

[asus killer]

6 minutes ago, DanielNS84 said:

Okay then, I guess I can wait a day or so! I really want more NVMe goodness though! I installed Hitman 2 and it didn't download correctly from Steam (Couldn't play past the 2nd level) and when I reinstalled it I threw it on the NVMe since I enjoyed the game so much...level load times went from like a full minute to sub-10 seconds for even the largest levels and I definitely want more of that!

[Amazonsucks]

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156174

 

Id get that particular SSD instead of the Evo. Its between the Evo and the Pro in terms of features. Its also cheaper than the Evo.

 

The 2TB is $326 currently.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820156175

 

Unless you're doing a lot of i/o intensive workloads that require sustained reads or writes at low queue depth(not gaming) then you wont really benefit from NVMe.

[ewitte]

I use a 1tb 970 evo for os  and have 3TB in 860s for the rest. And 14tb on the server.

[caldrin]

If its just gaming you do then go for the 970 evo for sure..

If you do a lot of high end graphics editing and so on maybe the extra ram would be good but no games out there will really use anything close 16gb. 

[DanielNS84]

15 hours ago, Amazonsucks said:

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156174

 

Id get that particular SSD instead of the Evo. Its between the Evo and the Pro in terms of features. Its also cheaper than the Evo.

 

The 2TB is $326 currently.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820156175

 

Unless you're doing a lot of i/o intensive workloads that require sustained reads or writes at low queue depth(not gaming) then you wont really benefit from NVMe.

I use NVMe drives actually, the only SATA I have in my system is my RAID-1 for Data (8TB Mirror). I actually made a decision, I bought 2 1TB 970 Evo drives to go with the 1 I already have, I have 2 NVMe slots in my motherboard left open so I'm gonna fill them. Also, I bought a PCIE M.2 adapter in case I don't get enough bandwidth through those slots. I was thinking about doing some RAID/Storage Space testing as well. I can wipe the 8TB RAID and switch it to 0 then RAID-0 the new Evo's and use them for a cache for the mechanical drives...I've heard good things about that. Regardless of what I do initially I'm gonna try a lot of setups and will settle on whatever is fastest...If I can get the write speed on those drives equal with the read I'll be happy even if RAID-0 doesn't do much for reads. I understand I'll take a latency hit but I'll still be booting from a single 970 Evo, anyone see any issues with this setup?

 

Edit: For reference this is the 1TB and this is the 2TB version of what I was talking about.

Edited November 22, 2018 by DanielNS84

[DanielNS84]

On 11/21/2018 at 3:32 PM, asus killer said:

Funny story here, I noticed in Farcry 5 when I load a game it does so almost instantly then the game starts, the screen THEN goes black and fades back in...hilarious!

[DanielNS84]

Also guys I was thinking about replacing my MSI z390 Meg Ace with the Asus WS z390 Pro for the added PCIE lanes from the PLX chip...thoughts guys?

 

Edit: I went ahead and ordered it, we'll see...the first of my 2 970 Evo's arrived today and the board, the 2nd 970, the PCIE to M.2 card, and the U.2 to M.2 adapter should be here tomorrow or Sunday!