re: PC Discussion - Gaming, Performance and Enthusiasts

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tLSUtiger93

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Did you get my e-mail yesterday afternoon?

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I managed to max out my 16GB RAM by a means other than a memory leak in some shitty program. I'm finalizing a project for work, watching a movie, browsing the web, and recording some trombone practice sessions with playalong tracks. I had open a few instances of Acrobat, 9 word documents, 6 graphics, VLC media player, Acoustica Mixcraft with 4 tracks, 20-30 chrome tabs, and Citrix remote desktop app with additional remote documents and windows explorer windows active.

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So, you're saying I should go 32gb for my new build - "just in case"?

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Depends on whether you're like me and just keep your entire day/week's worth of activity open all the time.

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Yeah - I hate to close tabs. And, I usually have both Firefox and IE open at the same time. Plus other programs. Of course, I'm running Windows 7 Professional, with 4gb and I rarely run out of memory.

I'm probably going 16gb for the new build, but you typically recommend as little RAM as you can get away with, rather than overbuying - simply because most people overbuy ram (and, to a lesser degree, processor and power supply) - I try to heed that when setting budget lines for various components.

Things I'm going to do as "firsts" this upcoming build:

First Fractal case

First full build of intel PC from scratch (I've built up from Dell server towers with Pentium 4s - and I've swapped out intel processors - but never an intel build from the ground up - all AMD for those builds in the past)

First G.Skill memory (I'm a Crucial/Corsair guy)

First fully modular case

First fully modular PS

First "non-budget" build

So, I'm excited enough about the differences - this may be the first build with no platter drives, but I'm probably going to throw 1 in there for local media and backup - if nothing else.

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And we all know Corsair doesn't make anything at all, but again you'd be hard pressed to find a bad Corsair product.

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I'm actually considering getting a "no kidding" Seasonic power supply this time, but I'm trying to justify the "Why?" I've been happy with all my Corsair-branded products (even the ones made by Seasonic ), and as you say, Corsair must be doing something right by being selective as to what they apply their name.

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the RAM market is little cloudier to me.

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It's always been kind of a wild west over there - Taiwanese-made used to be the big deal - unless I'm mistaken, Crucial/Micron built their reputation on being selective about which factory and even production line to get their dimms - and I think, at the end of the day, it was that quality control that gained them their market among some OEMs and hobbyists back in the heady, early days of "build your own".

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As you know, it's very simple to monitor RAM usage and decide whether you need to order more, but nobody seems to do it.

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Sure - and in my case, the usual suspects are:

1. Memory leaks (and more ram just kicks that problem down the road a few minutes/hours/days) - you eventually get a process failure or glitch that has to be resolved, no matter how much RAM you carry

2. The Sims 3 or Skyrim, minimized with browser windows and openoffice documents - at some point, I have an almost 6 year old AMD processor and 4gb of RAM - something is not going to play well something else.

3. Streaming media with other browser tabs/sessions open (and, like I said, I often have Firefox with many tabs open alongside IE - as the .mil and .gov sites just work better through IE).

So - when I finally pull the trigger, and if I ultimately decide on 16gb - it will be like "RAM insurance" to make sure I don't have to worry about it for situations 2 and 3 above.

I have much more significant issues with GPU and processor bottlenecks (and heck, even spinning drives) than I do with my 4gb, so 8 would probably not be short for the build.

At least I've talked myself down from 32gb or more, right? Progress - we should take it at this point.

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EDIT: So when are you going to buy your parts already?!

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Core i7s in stock somewhere? I'm still waiting to hear from Newegg. I see they pop in and pop out, but never when I'm shopping.

Oh, right. Intel still can't get their shite together and make enough i7s. I'm getting tired of desktops suffering in this race to keep Moore's law relevant.

EDIT: If you haven't already, sign up at this site: LINK

Set text and/or e-mail alerts for the 6700K at newegg, amazon, etc. That's how I got a couple of GTX 980s within the first week of release.

When I read the post, I immediately thought of your future. You are going to be miserable.

My big arse box came in today from Amazon.

Such a big box for a monitor, keyboard and Headset.

Newegg got me, I ordered the Acer XB270HU last week what I thought was on sale for $599. Got it in earlier this week, but I was unaware that Acer has another monitor with the same exact model number. One is bprz (IPS version) and the other Abprz (TN version.) Both of the listings on new egg said bprz in the titles in the search, but in the listing itself inside the specifications, it said Abprz. All the specs listed on newegg for the Abprz were for the bprz version including the 4ms time instead of 1ms and IPS and such. However, they sent me the Abprz version. Didn't notice what I got until I took it out of the box and noticed it wasn't IPS.

Newegg did the cool thing and took it back with no restocking fee for opening it, paid for shipping back. I tried to get them to update the product and they have made some changes, but it still says IPS in the title, some reviews after I ordered are complaining about getting the wrong one that they wanted as well. Newegg unfortunately wouldn't give me the IPS version for the price I paid, wouldn't give me a discount either. Just glad they took the TN version back.