How Much RAM Should You Get? 4GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB Tested

[SeaYou]

I put in a minimum of 32GB RAM, 16 GB Dedicated to ROMEX PrimoCache 2 Level cache, 16 for the system. The Big Platters store TBs of everything, the commonly & frequently used apps, games, programs, and data cache to an SSD, and the things I am currently using are running at RAM Drive speeds off the level 1 RAM Cache. Even the largest programs run at RAM Drive speeds. You could do near the same results with 16 GB. 8 system / 8 cache - if you like.

 

[justmeken]

I'm upgrading a Dell Optiplex computer for budget gaming system. I was wondering if gaming ram matter or can you buy used ram for the Dell Optiplex computer. I notice with the Dell ram you can only get up to 8 GB and with the gaming ram you can get up to 16 with a heat sink. Also you can get higher speeds but I read that the mother board keeps it at the speed original settings. The used Dell ram costs about $16 and gaming ram $100 or more depending on what you get.

 

[Burty117]

I'm upgrading a Dell Optiplex computer for budget gaming system. I was wondering if gaming ram matter or can you buy used ram for the Dell Optiplex computer. I notice with the Dell ram you can only get up to 8 GB and with the gaming ram you can get up to 16 with a heat sink. Also you can get higher speeds but I read that the mother board keeps it at the speed original settings. The used Dell ram costs about $16 and gaming ram $100 or more depending on what you get.

Get the Dell RAM, the motherboard will throttle the faster RAM anyway so you won't get any benefit from it. 8GB should be plenty for a cheap gaming system.

 

[Vilmir]

Great article, but it painfully misses some development-related benchmarks like compiling large codebases - easy nowadays to fetch a few and compile them with free build tools.

 

[Aaron777]

I appreciate the effort put into this article.. but as usual, strictly speaking (only), is this article correct. If one is strictly only running a game.. sure, 8 GB might be OK. But as most modern take techie/computer usrs function, like myself.. I've got SC2 or BF1 running, along with streaming music, a movie playing, file/newsgroups downloading/extracting, plus the chrome windows open with 30 tabs, and lets not forget the email client running in the background, and you've easily hit 16GBs + .. personally I say 32 GB, then you will for sure be OK for a while.