32 GB now increasingly common

Associate
Joined
28 Nov 2012
Posts
56
He's only going to be reviewing high end stuff and 32GB is cheap these days. Plus 2x16GB is normally dual rank.
You'd be surprised actually, quite a lot of the 32GB kits I looked at where still single, had to do a lot of digging to find a half decent 3600mhz kit of dual rank. Ended up getting some meh XLR8 RGB RAM. Was only £130 for 32GB 3600Mhz and oc'd nicely too.
 
Caporegime
Joined
8 Jan 2004
Posts
32,044
Location
Rutland
You'd be surprised actually, quite a lot of the 32GB kits I looked at where still single, had to do a lot of digging to find a half decent 3600mhz kit of dual rank. Ended up getting some meh XLR8 RGB RAM. Was only £130 for 32GB 3600Mhz and oc'd nicely too.

Yeah a lot of the more recent stuff has been single rank. B-die is dual rank only in 16GB however.
 
Associate
Joined
28 Nov 2012
Posts
56
Yeah a lot of the more recent stuff has been single rank. B-die is dual rank only in 16GB however.
Yeah you're correct on that tbf! All the B-Die stuff was mega bucks when I was trying to buy. Didn't want to spend over double to get a slightly better kit tbh, is B-Die still the go-to? Pretty sure it was becoming rarer and rarer to get
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Oct 2019
Posts
11,694
Location
Uk
I'm happy sitting on 16gb till the second gen of DDR5 systems arrive, never played a game that uses more than 11gb @1440p so would rather spend the extra cash on another NVME or something.
 
Associate
Joined
4 Jun 2020
Posts
2,401
Its not just about whether or not its needed now or yesterday, its often a case of future proofing too.

If it costs the same or less per Gb to get higher density ram, then its often worth doing.

In the case of 2x32 Gb, they generally still cost a lot and most motherboards don't support them. 2x16 tends to cost the same or less per Gb than 2x8 does, while also being useful if you only have one or two games that can use it, as well as ensuring you have enough for any upcoming games.

Speed and timings are also somewhat important, and 2x16 has shown to barely be much worse than 2x8, with there being plenty of kits that have the potential for 3600 CL14 or 4000+ CL16.

While there are 2x8 kits that can go higher, they also cost more so whats the point?

Think I read somewhere that G Skill were releasing 2x8 5066 DDR4 for 150 USD, still cant find it anywhere though, and with DDR5 coming out soon it doesn't make much sense to pay any premiums for faster DDR4 right now.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Feb 2006
Posts
3,396
I have used 32GB for > 5 years, even my laptop which is 5+ years old has 32GB ddr3. Most of the time it does not make much difference but if you bounce around using lots of different applications it reduces load times and just feels smother as the OS caches stuff in the background. I have 64GB in my main PC which I got when the first 4*16GB sets released just after DDR4 came out.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,618
Location
Finland
Yeah you're correct on that tbf! All the B-Die stuff was mega bucks when I was trying to buy. Didn't want to spend over double to get a slightly better kit tbh, is B-Die still the go-to? Pretty sure it was becoming rarer and rarer to get
Samsung B-die should be still the best DDR4 for both tight latencies and for combining those with high clocks.
For high clocks alone other newer chips have achieved better, but they can't do as tight latencies.

New DRAM chips simply aren't designed for improving performance, but for making them cheaper to manufacture and increase capacity.
And made at old 20nm node B-die needs lot more silicon area per capacity.
Samsung actually EOL'ed B-die in their own DIMMs two years ago.
Without demand from willing to pay high end memory makers its production would have certainly ended.
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Apr 2013
Posts
3,745
Pretty cheap to buy these days at ~£150 for 32gb. Equally if you have 16gb already then for £75 to double it as an upgrade. So I'm not surprised 32gb is becoming the standard.

Also with ps5 and Xbox series having 16gb I can see PC ports of next gen console titles needing more than that to run smoothly under Windows.
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
Posts
25,736
I know when i specced my new PC I wanted 32GB, the idea being it wouldn't need any upgrade or additions for 3-4 years. I paid £116 for 2x16Gb Crucial Ballistix Black RGB 3200MHz CL16. I could have gone faster but the price went up by quite a bit and this was a good Black Friday deal. I've just looked and the price has doubled! £230 now!
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2005
Posts
19,435
Location
Midlands
I got my 64gb ddr4 3200 stuff on black Friday 2021 and cant believe that its gone up a bit in price. Usually everything i buy drops in price over time.
Im sure it will drop or ddr5 will make dd4 like ddr3 prices now
 
Permabanned
Joined
12 Sep 2013
Posts
9,221
Location
Knowhere
I sold my 2 x 8 gb B-die memory & grabbed some cheap 2 x 16 gb sticks a few months back & I've been unable to find/feel a difference between then & now. I wouldn't mind grabbing some more to up my PC to 64 gb's but with DDR5 on the horizon I'm going to wait until that hits the market to see if DDR4 pricing drops further, that or I'll simply wait until my next CPU upgrade in 3 or 4 years time & go DDR5. I don't think 32 gb's is going to hold my gaming back anytime soon so I'm in no rush.

I've just looked and the price has doubled!

Ouch!
 
Back
Top Bottom