Is 32GB silly?

Jacky-Boy16

Jacky-Boy16

Jacky-Boy16

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25 Jun 2007
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109
Hey guys, I'm considering making a rig similar to the one below. It would be used occasionally for gaming, but mainly for photoshop, zbrush, maya, unity, xnormal etc.

1 x Intel Core i7-4770 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail with FREE Grid 2 PC Game £249.95
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 WindForce 3x OC 2048MB PCI-Express Graphics Card £229.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £131.99
1 x Toshiba (7K3000.D) 3TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA300) HDD £89.99
1 x XFX Pro Series 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £85.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £83.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (KHX16C10B1BK2/16X) £79.99
1 x Plextor M5S 128GB Solid State Drive - (PX-128M5S) £74.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Windowed Case - Black £69.95
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Silver (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £66.98
1 x LG GH24NS95 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £1,196.80 (includes shipping : £12.50).

My question is would this build benefit from another
Kingston HyperX Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (KHX16C10B1BK2/16X) £79.99
to take it up to 32GB. I'm considering it for future proofing and also because i've been led to believe that the software I use can utilise all of your available memory.

What are your thoughts?
 
Not if you get a decent price, I wanted quad channel memory with sticks of 8GB each and got a great deal on 32GB 2400mhz kit. Well worth it imho. Always bettter to have 'more' than 'not enough'..
 
If you are using the system for editing pics and videos and rendering and stuff like that
then yeh you might benefit from the other 16gb as well. At the end of the day I suppose it
depends on your budget at the minute as you can always just see how the system is as
you have it and if you want just get the extra RAM and add it at a later date.
 
At the end of a working day with lots of WIP stuff open my PC can be pushing 11GB, so 16GB isn't all that silly in my experience, though I don't check often since upgrading to 32GB :p
 
Very but I run 32gb with half of it on a ram drive I use for all my temporary files with 2 ssd drives installs last about the same time it takes to relive 4 pints of cider
 
OP 32gbs may not be silly but have you thought about building a 3930k based system. For what you want to use it for, it could be a fair bit faster than the 4770k setup.
 
I think a 3930k setup would probably be pushing my budget a little too far (extra £200) for the performance boost, I could be swayed though. How much better would it be performance wise?
 
Jacky-Boy16 said:
I think a 3930k setup would probably be pushing my budget a little too far (extra £200) for the performance boost, I could be swayed though. How much better would it be performance wise?
Click to expand...

A 3930k comes with 2 extra cores and overclocks better than a 4770k, depending on what you are doing a 3930k can give almost 50% more performance. The 3930k is very good at heavy number crunching and graphics/multi media use.

I don't use the same apps you do so I will have to leave it to others to give a more exact account of how much faster they run on a 3930k.

Something else you get with the 3930k is the ability to run 64gbs of ram if needed which is twice the amount a 4770k can manage.

Below is an old pic of my 3930k @5.0ghz running Cinebench 11.5, this bench is all about the CPU/Ram drawing a image

cin115.jpg


The best I have seen a 4770k manage at stock is a score just over 8 and when overclocked just over 10

If you were using a 3930k 24/7 a more reasonable overclock would be around 4.5ghz.
 
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Kaapstad said:
A 3930k comes with 2 extra cores and overclocks better than a 4770k, depending on what you are doing a 3930k can give almost 50% more performance. The 3930k is very good at heavy number crunching and graphics/multi media use.

I don't use the same apps you do so I will have to leave it to others to give a more exact account of how much faster they run on a 3930k.

Something else you get with the 3930k is the ability to run 64gbs of ram if needed which is twice the amount a 4770k can manage.
Click to expand...

Yes its worth a look at a X79 build with what you use your PC for, whats your budget?
 
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Kaapstad : Cheers mate, really interesting stuff, I will look into this.

OLDPHART : My original budget for just the tower with no peripherals was £1200 I'm willing to budge though if I can get a better deal for a little bit more.

whyscotty : Hmm yeah definetly food for thought, gonna do a bit more research into this.

confused stu : yep don't worry I spotted this earlier, I'm gonna go for windows 8 I think, just need to check compatibility with the software I use.
 
If I was you I'd buy 16 GB, install everything, use it normally, and if you find the OS using swap space a lot then buy another set.

I have 32 GB in my workstation and do consume all of it but only every now and then. The only way to know is to give it a try.

P.S. this is using Fedora linux, that's a cheap move by MS imposing a memory cap.
 
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