Is buying 128GB RAM overkill?

[neur0maniak]

The whole 'total writes' stuff is garbage

Your experience with one drive is probably not enough to state that categorically, for all drives, of all manufacturers. Past, present and future.
It's like the MTBF rating, except it's a minimum instead of an average.
Many drives will go far beyond that limit, some will even go further than that. Though, there will be those who have drives fail not long after.

 

[neur0maniak]

I have purposefully tried to batter the crap out of it with reinstalls just to see for science and it is still fsr above and beyond any expectations.

The reinstalls are not what's gonna break your TBW.
Even if we say a windows reinstall is 100Gb (it's more like 30Gb), 50x100 would give you 5Tb written.
Your 128Gb Crucial M4 has a 72TBW.
Your reinstalls will have barely scratched that.
Your virtual memory usage over 8years will have no doubt far exceeded that though.

 

[Tetras]

Maybe you missed the part where I said I have 9.1Gb/64Gb ram being used, yet still have 12Gb of virtual memory being used.
If you have virtual memory enabled, it is ALWAYS being used, no matter how much you have.


Are there actual definitions, or is that your opinion?
My opinion tells me, my uses are personal to me, there's no 'work' being done (except for the web development, which I admitted was not the reason I need RAM), therefore it's 'home use'.
It definitely is no server, I have a few. One for web/email/database, another media server, and another private gitlab server. 8Gb, 4Gb and 16Gb RAM respectively.
This computer serves nothing but the user.

They're actual definitions, the kind of stuff you describe, programming (esp. with large datasets), 3d models, rendering, etc, is what workstations are built for. It's why they have more cores, more memory bandwidth and capacity, AVX 512, more or faster storage, more PCI-E lanes.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

The reinstalls are not what's gonna break your TBW.
Even if we say a windows reinstall is 100Gb (it's more like 30Gb), 50x100 would give you 5Tb written.
Your 128Gb Crucial M4 has a 72TBW.
Your reinstalls will have barely scratched that.
Your virtual memory usage over 8years will have no doubt far exceeded that though.

Well no, the virtual memory use has not even exceeded 10% of that. Show me anyone that has had a windows drive SSD fail from virtual memory use.

Never once seen or heard of it ever happen. Its purely hypothetical BS, like 'overclocking will kill your graphics card'.

 

[EsaT]

Your 128Gb Crucial M4 has a 72TBW.
Your reinstalls will have barely scratched that.
Your virtual memory usage over 8years will have no doubt far exceeded that though.

And drive health of 90% means there's something like 65TB left of that.

If not running out of memory Windows won't be constantly juggling data between RAM and page file.

 

[HangTime]

So what do you think then, go less RAM and better GPU?

Sounds like you've decided already but as a general point, for gaming money spent on GPU will always be more worthwhile once you get past a minimum threshold of RAM.
As PC builders we generally have a natural inclination to build 'balanced' systems but for gaming there should be a heavy bias towards GPU.

 

[james.miller]

The reinstalls are not what's gonna break your TBW.
Even if we say a windows reinstall is 100Gb (it's more like 30Gb), 50x100 would give you 5Tb written.
Your 128Gb Crucial M4 has a 72TBW.
Your reinstalls will have barely scratched that.
Your virtual memory usage over 8years will have no doubt far exceeded that though.

I've used the same 128gb samsung 830 as a boot drive for 9 years now. That's already outlived any mechanical hard drive I've owned. hibernation and pagefiles as standard, windows 10 insider builds so weekly if not bi-weekly reinstalls. 62Tb written. Long way to go yet before i wear the drive out. paging to an SSD is a non-issue, it never has been an issue.

 

[sybaris]

Sounds like you've decided already but as a general point, for gaming money spent on GPU will always be more worthwhile once you get past a minimum threshold of RAM.
As PC builders we generally have a natural inclination to build 'balanced' systems but for gaming there should be a heavy bias towards GPU.

I have taken the advice of the many to help me come to a decision. Unfortunately I need a gpu and in today’s market so putting the funds towards that. I try to build something that will last me as long as possible without.having to upgrade and spend more on the PC. I normally get 8 years and about 60,000 hours use before it stars to fail o the point of annoying me.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

'Leave page file on SSD and max out ram:

https://www.ricksdailytips.com/page-file-on-ssd/

On that note my backup PC has a 512 Gb SSD and only 8 Gb ram, haven't tested the drive health in a while, will have a check later.

In any case, an SSD with page filing left on will still outlive the rest of your PC and likely last over a decade.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Posted my SSD info here:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/foru...2-with-page-filing-never-turned-off.18931407/

9 years of use, just under 625 annual switch ons and 7 hours daily use over that much time.

Always been a boot disk, never turned off page filing.

Still at 90% health.

 

[TheVoice]

IAI Programming (Computer vision, etc) - Uses large datasets.
3D Modelling and rendering (initially up to 16k images, for them to be later downscaled)
I don't get paid, I'm not even good enough for that. I do it to learn about them, and because I enjoy the topic.
So I consider these HOME uses.

I really don't understand why people are desperately trying to stretch the definition of what a home user is. The average person buying a boxed PC from PC World or Dell is not going to be doing any of that.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

I really don't understand why people are desperately trying to stretch the definition of what a home user is. The average person buying a boxed PC from PC World or Dell is not going to be doing any of that.

The average person buying a PC from PC world or Dell is't playing games either.

I think we can agree that "average home user" is too ambigious to be used in the context that some people have used it in this thread.

 

[Furyus]

32gb I'd say more then enough! What's the price for 128gb at least £800?

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

32gb I'd say more then enough! What's the price for 128gb at least £800?

Can be had for a bit over £500 actually if you go for barebones 2666 modules with no heatsinks.

 

[sybaris]

128 has just gone up by another hundred

 

[MyJules]

it would really depend on what everyone do with their PCs. Personally, i do have 128GB and do make use of it. This is my home PC that i paid for myself but i also use it for work. As for SSD, i normally wear out SSD (I've been using Crucial SSDs) in about 2 year time (256-512GB, not top of line but mid range like M4 or MX500). Since i know i wear them out, i watch out for it and just replace it with another mid range in time. On the most recent build, i have moved to M2 WD750. i'll see how this goes (but i changed my usage so that drive usage is a lot lower now).

Now, do i really need 128GB? Can i live with 64GB? ya, i could probably make do with 64GB without feeling much of pain. But i was able to get 128GB last year at reasonable price so there it is. with today's price, i am not sure if i have done the same. I do have to run RAM at a bit lower speed than what i would have with the same RAM but half.

 

[Cooler running]

The only reason to go above 64 GB is if you're planning on running a server.
Even then it would only be worth wile if you had at least 32 cores, and if you're looking at 32 core quad channel stuff, may as well go for ECC too. Short story is go for a 2x 32 GB kit if you're concerned you're going to need large amounts of RAM. Almost guarantee you wont see more than 20 GB usage.

Even then 32 GB is overkill outside of a work station.

 

[233]

Really depends if you can afford it and want it


Currently speccing up 2 basic office machines and even those will have 16gb of ram

3 machines at home have my daily use Mac Pro with 24gb, gaming pc with 32gb and a project Mac Pro with 96gb

if you can justify it to yourself do it. Then see how many chrome tabs you can open

 

[The Old School Gamer]

The majority of the new PC's we sell have 16Gb (2x8Gb).
Our higher end builds we will normally kit out with 32Gb (4x8Gb).

Only very rarely will we recommend, sell or be asked to fit 64Gb.
And I have only known of 1 single build this year to be fitted with 128Gb.

So hopefully that puts things into 'some kind' of perspective.

*And we have built and sold hundreds of new PCs this year.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

The majority of the new PC's we sell have 16Gb (2x8Gb).
Our higher end builds we will normally kit out with 32Gb (4x8Gb).

Only very rarely will we recommend, sell or be asked to fit 64Gb.
And I have only known of 1 single build this year to be fitted with 128Gb.

So hopefully that puts things into 'some kind' of perspective.

*And we have built and sold hundreds of new PCs this year.

Just proof that pre builds are cheap tat using the worst possible components.

Why do you hate 2x16Gb so much?