Tech Primer: What you need to know about DDR4 memory

I'm talking of sticking with DDR3. The biggest advantage of DDR4 is voltage reduction and that's great for battery powered devices but kind of useless for desktops. IMO.
 
Besides Server and possibly workstation application is there really a necessity to have more than 32GB of RAM in a home desktop, even more so at 64GB of RAM. I've had 12GB since the launch of X58 and have never needed more, let alone 64GB. The only logical application for home use would be a RAM Drive, other than that I see it as a waste of money to equip a system with so much RAM you'll never use. Not to mention by the time you are using all that RAM the rest of the system will likely be a bottleneck. Back in the day you rated a computer based on how much RAM it had, just people who don't know any better still use that thought process when buying new computers, and sadly that's the vast majority.



My 7 years old laptop has 16gb of ram, and I was struggling with it, so I had to go for desktop, It supports 64 ,I have 32. And not all but few people do need that much ram, If you are a data scientist , BigData Developer,you will need it. Obviously, you wont like to have two different systems. one for entertainment , one for your home projects/POC/learning. I use it so that I can run 4 virtual systems running hortonworks in a cluster, I need 6 data and 1 master, I.e. total 7 , but I am managing with 4 , due to less ram. so it is needed .
 
IMO, it's doubtful that RAM, under any conditions, adds significantly to the heat load of a system -- nothing compared to a GPU being meaningfully engaged. The benefits of better cycle times and lower power consumption are welcomed advances to portable devices :grin:
 
My 7 years old laptop has 16gb of ram, and I was struggling with it, so I had to go for desktop, It supports 64 ,I have 32. And not all but few people do need that much ram, If you are a data scientist , BigData Developer,you will need it. Obviously, you wont like to have two different systems. one for entertainment , one for your home projects/POC/learning. I use it so that I can run 4 virtual systems running hortonworks in a cluster, I need 6 data and 1 master, I.e. total 7 , but I am managing with 4 , due to less ram. so it is needed .

I posted that comment years ago, I had eventually gone to 24GB on that X58 platform but have since retired it from main use and replaced it with X99 and 32GB of RAM. Nowadays I'd look at 16GB as being the minimum for even a gaming system let alone a workstation or a system used for virtualization, certainly in those situations your going to want as much RAM as possible.
 
I posted that comment years ago, I had eventually gone to 24GB on that X58 platform but have since retired it from main use and replaced it with X99 and 32GB of RAM. Nowadays I'd look at 16GB as being the minimum for even a gaming system let alone a workstation or a system used for virtualization, certainly in those situations your going to want as much RAM as possible.

old thread still relevant topic,
I had 16 gig of corsair dominator 2133mhz on my Rampage IV Extreme X79, 3930K ,and found another identical kit on the cheap for 8 X 4 gig sticks which didn't make much difference,32 gig was just nice to play with,then got the 2 airflopro fans and activity light bars,kits..

but on my Z77 sabertooth,3570K I had 2 X 4 gig sticks of Gskill sniper 1600 MHz, and a stick had failed ,it had gone pricy to rma or buy a second replacement stick, so I ordered a kit of 2 x 8 gig of corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 Mhz ,what a difference, my cinebench score skyrocketed,,
then by tightening timings a little at a time it kept going untill I was out scoring a 3770 in multi thread and outscoring a 4770 in single thread, single thread just blew me away. I highly recommend a speed bump if its time for an upgrade on the memory.as long as your MoBo allows for over clocking or has XMP settings built in.

if building a whole new build , you'll be doing yourself a favor by opting for higher speed memory if you can run it ,you won't be disappointed.
 
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