RAM Recomendations

I have 8 slots available on my new motherboard and my processor and OS support up to 64 GB so I was wondering what I should get to fill up all 8 slots and all 64 GB? I was thinking about this G.SKILL G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-19200CL10Q2-64GBZHD - Newegg.com

Please don't waste your money on that. You'll never use half of it. Your specs say you have 12GB.......buy a 16GB kit and sell your 12GB kit on ebay. Also, it doesn't look like you have an SSD......that would be first on my list of things to buy.

I don't need an ssd. My hard drives have been reliable, fast and high capacity. I need the ram however because my current dimms are a possible cause of the BSOD I keep getting. I am going to go ahead and fill the motherboard because 3DS Max and Adobe would tend to eat up my current amount. Especially when doing renders in AE or Max.

I guarantee you don't need that much RAM....and I guarantee an SSD for your OS would blow your mind. There is no reason to have that ballin of a system and NOT have your OS and programs on an SSD. I can give you real numbers of how much faster an SSD is than even the fastest of hard drives if you want. I can promise you it's exponentially faster.

The more RAM you have, the slower it will run. Normally, that is not an issue with smaller amounts of RAM but, once you get above 32GB, even running at 1600MHz becomes a problem. Unless you are doing some heavy video and photo editing or some really serious multitasking, 16GB should be more than enough. Even when doing video rendering, etc. 32GB would be plenty and cause fewer problems.

Until you have had an SSD, you can not appreciate the improvements they will give. The OS will boot much faster and programs will load at lightning speed. Even the best 10,000 rpm HDDs can't hold a candle to the lousiest SSDs currently available, even if you only have SATA II available.

SF, I have W7 x64 w/ I-5 and I run 32 gb ram (4 slots @ 8 gb each), two video cards and three monitors. I find the most noticeable difference with a lot of RAM, is when scanning, defragging or backing up. Sometimes it takes a minute or two to finish writing a Macrium image to the drive after the program is stopped, as (I assume) it's all in RAM. I also have NOT made the transition to SSD, as I prefer to wait until we get affordable large capacity SSD's. My two cents.

You are getting good advise. You well see a marked speed improvement with a SSD. You well see a decrease in system performance as you increase the amount of installed RAM over 16GB. 16GB is more than sufficient, most are fine with 8GB.

madcratebuilder said:

You are getting good advise. You well see a marked speed improvement with a SSD. You well see a decrease in system performance as you increase the amount of installed RAM over 16GB. 16GB is more than sufficient, most are fine with 8GB.

I agree except 32GB would more likely be the high end for uninhibited performance unless overclocking the RAM well past 1600MHz. On present rig, if I had had to choose between an SSD and 16GB RAM or just 32GB of RAM without the SSD, I would have chosen the 16GB and SSD in a heartbeat (fortunately, I was able to afford both and my MOBO could handle it without a performance hit since I'm not overclocking anything).

I could see the OP benefiting from 24GB (six 4GB sticks) or 32GB (eight 4GB sticks) of RAM since he said he was doing some rendering. One disadvantage of large amounts of RAM is the hybersys.fil file will be huge (24GB is the default with my 32GB of RAM and I may need to increase that sometime in the future) in order for hibernate to work (I need hibernate fully enabled since my UPS uses it to safely shut down my PC without losing any work in progress).

I agree, there are cases that warrant more than 16GB of RAM, no doubt. If 16GB is cutting it close, then get a 4x8GB kit AND an SSD. There is really no excuse for not having one at this point.