8 or 16gb ram for Haswell?

[mas5acre]

Is 16gb of ram overkill? I play emulators, and host a plex server and use handbrake generally. Is it still reccommended to fill only two ram slots cause it helps with overclocking?

 

[Culbrelai]

General gaming doesn't need more than 4GB, or 8GB realistically (back when RAM was cheap you minus well have got 8...)

If you're hosting a gaming server, you might want more though. Should look up how much RAM the server client will use at its max...

 

[kmo_9000]

16gb of ram can be useful in a lot of situations outside of gaming. So if you have the money to spend on extra ram then go for it.

I think if you have an unlocked CPU it doesn't matter so much if you have all ram slots filled since the multiplier is not tied to the ram.

 

[mas5acre]

For an i7 920, it mattered that you didn't populate all the the ram slots even though it had an unlocked multiplier, before the "k" nomenclature.

 

[TheHutchTTU]

Didn't BF4 come out and say 8GB of RAM is recommended? It would be wise to assume that future games will follow that trend. Therefore, I would suggest starting with 8GB (2x4GB) so you have the option later to upgrade to 16GB if need be.

 

[Nebulous]

Looking around I think I may have found your board (in your sig) here on newegg .

According to specs your particular board's memory max supported is 24gb (triple channel). You can populate all 6 ram slots but then you'll have to raise the chipset voltage in order to run them. I had to do that with several 1366 boards.

You can do 12gb (3x4gb sticks) and you'll be golden. You can also have the full 24gb (6x4gb sticks), but again if you plan to overclock be ready to raise voltages.

 

[TheHutchTTU]

I think the OP is asking about Haswell, so the hardware in his sig is irrelevant.

 

[mas5acre]

Yeah building a new machine. Was just curious if I should stick to just 2 dimm slots to help with over clocking, like I did with my 920

 

[Mower]

I myself 3 sticks of 2 gb dd3/1600 from my i7920 now in my i5/4670k, total 6gb, as a gamer is there any point in trying to increase RAM to 8gb?

 

[Woomack]

If your games are not using more than ~4GB then there is no point to buy more. Windows is using ~2GB so for all other stuff you have ~4GB left.

 

[manu2b]

A few games now make good use of 8GB (frostbite and frostbite 2 engines for example, which are coded in 64bits).

Edit: irrelevant reply. Should not write anything, either before coffee or after a few beers!

 

[Mower]

In my task manager resources with any of my games and flight sims, RAM usage stays under the 6GB, do I need overhead or can I safely stay at 6 GB under these circumstances?

 

[peanutbudder]

I kept having BF4 crash on me with 8gb of ram and to my surprise I opened task manager to see 6.4gb being used in BF4! I was like what the hell is going on... I installed 16gb and haven't had a single issue with BF4 since. I would recommend buying a 2x8gb Kit for future upgrades if needed.

 

[Tyerker]

RAM is too expensive, generally, right now. I got my 16GB kit for $90 last summer. I would suggest sticking with 8GB for now, and then looking at doubling up when prices come down. Either way, I would do a minimum of 4GB sticks. If you're looking at one of the boards with 8 RAM slots (forgive me if this makes me ignorant of Haswell) I would still do 4GB sticks for the possibility of 32GB some day. I would certainly stick with 2 sticks, either way, so perhaps 2x8GB would be the way to go, and then 2 more when prices come down.

 

[Mower]

RAM is definitely overpriced right now, needlessly so, so I am certainly not buffing out on RAM at present. RAM manufacturers dont deserve to have their greed rewarded.

 

[Tyerker]

It's not greed. It's a combination of Hynex having factories burning down, and also the push and pull of supply and demand over the last 2 or 3 years have made manufacturing practices go back and forth pretty dramatically.

 

[bob4933]

I kept having BF4 crash on me with 8gb of ram and to my surprise I opened task manager to see 6.4gb being used in BF4! I was like what the hell is going on... I installed 16gb and haven't had a single issue with BF4 since. I would recommend buying a 2x8gb Kit for future upgrades if needed.

Really??? I haven't seen bf4 go over 3gb for me yet

 

[Woomack]

It's not greed. It's a combination of Hynex having factories burning down, and also the push and pull of supply and demand over the last 2 or 3 years have made manufacturing practices go back and forth pretty dramatically.

Prices were going up before Hynix factory burned and I haven't seen any bigger changes after that. Or maybe low speed memory went up by maybe 10% but higher speed kits are without changes and some are even cheaper ( don't look at Corsair , their prices were always weirdly high ).
When WD had issues because of flood then they raised prices by 100%.

Also memory manufacturers can set prices how they like. There are 3 memory manufacturers on the market right now - Hynix, Samsung and Micron while Hynix and Samsung have maybe 85% market.
No matter what 2133+ memory you pick, except maybe some single series like TridentX 2400, then everything else is based on Hynix CFR/MFR. Every single manufacturer in 2133 10-12-12, 2400 11-13-13, 2600 C11/12, 2666-2800 C12/13 ... is using Hynix IC.
Since 2x4GB kits are mainly based on single sided Hynix ( or lower speed on single sided Micron ) then if you care about high memory performance then better is to get 2x8GB kit just because all of them will be double sided so up to 20-30% higher performance ( at least in benchmarks ). However in games it's not changing much. 1-3% FPS difference is like no change at all.

 

[Mower]

Greed.