Best bang for buck DDR3 Memory

fastwunz

fastwunz

fastwunz

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Joined
12 Jul 2005
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Hi folks,

So having toyed with the idea of a completely new build ive decided to spank a little more on my i52500k system to give it some extra legs.

Curently ive got the i5 running at a rather wonderful 4.8Mhz and have a GTX970 at 1080P at 8 Gigs of Kingston Hyper X Fury Grey (which you cant get anymore).

All this is hooked up to a Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 motherboard. According to Gigabytes website i can run up to 32Gigs of ram but this would be overkill so going to go for 16GB.

With that in mind, could someone please recommend me the best bang for buck 2X 8GB kit please? up to £120 if needs be.

thanks very much
 
thanks - my board can run that but i think 2400 is not something ill benefit from given a cost/performance comparison - any other thoughts?

thanks
 
It might be that you are stuck in the middle of upgrade cycles, dropping a hundred quid in a new set of ram might not be very economical in terms of cost vs performance increases.

Maybe keep the current system for another year or two then just buy a new platform.
 
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do you need 16gb or 32gb? 16 gb is enough currently.
if all you need is 16 gb, why not just get another 2x4gb sticks on MM on the cheap? not worth getting ddr3 ram anymore (especially new)
(you may need to loosen timings a bit though, to run 4x4gb sticks)
 
tamzzy said:
do you need 16gb or 32gb? 16 gb is enough currently.
if all you need is 16 gb, why not just get another 2x4gb sticks on MM on the cheap? not worth getting ddr3 ram anymore (especially new)
(you may need to loosen timings a bit though, to run 4x4gb sticks)
Click to expand...

well to be honest, i had hoped to get a bit better performance with 16GB and i would rather the stability of 2X4 sticks - its in games that i would rather see a more solid 60FPS experience - even in certian parts of world of warcraft i sometimes truggle to get over 40fps
 
might be worth heading to the MM, you could get 2x8gb sticks for £60-70 there.
definitely wouldn't look to get ddr3 ram new as they're obsolete.
 
Unless you are using all 8gb, then you will struggle to see any performance increase by increasing ram.

The difference in speeds is negligible in gaming from 1600 to 2400 mhz

Run a monitoring tool to see what your actual ram usage is
 
certainly wouldn't be looking at buying DDR3 new these days.
Second hand is a better option IMO.

A 2x8gb set on MM should be around £60
 
I would also say as another user of that board, I struggled to get it to be happy with anything over 1600MHz RAM. A long time ago now bought some 2133/1866 and it just would not work. I ended up overclocking my current RAM.

Worth a mention, although I'm sure my CPU maybe has a duff IMC.
 
4.8 Ghz is nice. what volts are you using for that?

i'm in the same situation. i have 8GB of RAM with my 2500K @ 4.4 Ghz. it's 4 x 2GB sticks. I'm currently in the process of buying 4 x 4GB sticks @ 1600 Mhz. I've managed to get 2 x 4GB sticks so far. Now trying to get another 2 the same is being tricky.

Second hand RAM prices are okay not the best. They seem to be expensive second hand compared to what they were new when I bought back in the day. I think I got 8GB for around £50. Now it's around £35-40 for the same thing second hand. Good news is you will likely get good money for your current RAM to offset this.

the 2500K is still more than good enough for 1080P gaming and will be for the next 2 years. I plan on then retiring it for a kabylake system. RAM requirements for modern games are 16GB that is why i'm trying to go from 8 to 16. GPU and VRAM is also important. Ideally you want a GPU with 3-6GB of RAM. 2GB isn't cutting it anymore. 1050 is okay but much better off with a 1050ti or 1060 so your GTX 970 is still fine here too.

So yes if you want your system to last another 2 years I'd gof or 16GB of RAM and leave everything as is. You can sell the old RAM to offset the cost of new RAM. I'd go second hand for a bit more savings though as suggested.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
the 2500K is still more than good enough for 1080P gaming and will be for the next 2 years. I plan on then retiring it for a kabylake system. RAM requirements for modern games are 16GB that is why i'm trying to go from 8 to 16. GPU and VRAM is also important. Ideally you want a GPU with 3-6GB of RAM. 2GB isn't cutting it anymore. 1050 is okay but much better off with a 1050ti or 1060 so your GTX 970 is still fine here too.

So yes if you want your system to last another 2 years I'd gof or 16GB of RAM and leave everything as is. You can sell the old RAM to offset the cost of new RAM. I'd go second hand for a bit more savings though as suggested.
Click to expand...

I cannot run Ultra textures on Quake Champions because 8GB simply isn't enough. Funny though, I remember listening to people saying 16GB is overkill for gaming. Nothing is overkill.

In Quake Champions Afterburner says its using between 6.5 to 7.1GB. Even a lot of texture mods for single player games uses just over 7GB. Sometimes with it creeping over 7GB in Quake Champions I can feel like paging millisecond skips, not often but it is there since the game uses so much.

I'll definitely have to go 2400MHz 16GB next month with DDR3. Wish I done this years ago instead of listening to some people. Overkill, overkill...
 
V F said:
I cannot run Ultra textures on Quake Champions because 8GB simply isn't enough. Funny though, I remember listening to people saying 16GB is overkill for gaming. Nothing is overkill.

In Quake Champions Afterburner says its using between 6.5 to 7.1GB. Even a lot of texture mods for single player games uses just over 7GB. Sometimes with it creeping over 7GB in Quake Champions I can feel like paging millisecond skips, not often but it is there since the game uses so much.

I'll definitely have to go 2400MHz 16GB next month with DDR3. Wish I done this years ago instead of listening to some people. Overkill, overkill...
Click to expand...

Speed doesn't make as much difference once over 1600Mhz on DDR3 timings are more important all the faster ram has loose timings. So it's the same thing in reality
 
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