Is buying 128GB RAM overkill?

[sybaris]

I guess it depends on budget and what you are willing to spend just as much as requirements. You could tell someone not to buy a Ferrari as most of the time they won't go over 30mph. It's human nature to default to getting as much as you can for your purchase even if you don't use it all.
If its a case of purely being practical then why buy loads of RGB stuff to light up a box? It serves no functional purpose other than making the components glow in the dark.
I do have a limit though as to how much "excess requirement" I will go to but again it depends on price and % of the overall build cost. If I spend for example £2K on a new PC and it will cost £300 for 32GB, £400 for 64GB and £500 for 128GB. If I budgeted £350 for 32Gb but an extra £50 is going to double my RAM, in the
grand scheme of things, I may think it is worth it to me. I may have budgeted £600 for RAM, or even spent less on other components than anticipated, in which case I might say that I may not use 128GB but it falls inside what I have allocated.

 

[The Old School Gamer]

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

Why do you hate 2x16Gb so much?

Same components you and everyone else buys and uses.

And dealing in 8Gb modules is far more common and flexible for upgrade paths until you need to go pass 32Gb which isn't so common.

 

[EsaT]

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

Why do you hate 2x16Gb so much?

Actually performance wise 8 GB DIMMs are in one sense better:
Two DIMMs per channel guarantees dual rank and command interleaving.
While in 16GB DIMMs only way to guarantee dual rank is buying very expensive Samsung B-die kits, like 3200MHZ CL14 and 3600MHz 16-16-16.

Which cost so much that nowadays their price starts approaching doubled capacity normal good kits!
And command interleaving improves memory access bottlenecked gaming performance such amount, that countering that with single rank would need very tight manual timings.
Also obviously being able to get 32GB for not that much more than 16GB is better for future proofness of PC.

Now of course if PC has GPU costing upward £2000, then memory should be tight latency Samsung B-die.

 

[Craig_d1]

Personally, I'd go with 2*16...you should soon see how much you actually use of that. That way you can easily double to 64gb if you want in future if you using close to 32gb useage.

 

[Tetras]

I guess it depends on budget and what you are willing to spend just as much as requirements. You could tell someone not to buy a Ferrari as most of the time they won't go over 30mph. It's human nature to default to getting as much as you can for your purchase even if you don't use it all.
If its a case of purely being practical then why buy loads of RGB stuff to light up a box? It serves no functional purpose other than making the components glow in the dark.
I do have a limit though as to how much "excess requirement" I will go to but again it depends on price and % of the overall build cost. If I spend for example £2K on a new PC and it will cost £300 for 32GB, £400 for 64GB and £500 for 128GB. If I budgeted £350 for 32Gb but an extra £50 is going to double my RAM, in the
grand scheme of things, I may think it is worth it to me. I may have budgeted £600 for RAM, or even spent less on other components than anticipated, in which case I might say that I may not use 128GB but it falls inside what I have allocated.

It makes sense to budget it that way, but the only issue for me is that if it's never going to get used then that money would be better invested in something else, e.g. replacing an HDD with an SSD, upgrading the graphics card, higher model CPU, better monitor and so on, which will be noticed every day.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Actually performance wise 8 GB DIMMs are in one sense better:
Two DIMMs per channel guarantees dual rank and command interleaving.
While in 16GB DIMMs only way to guarantee dual rank is buying very expensive Samsung B-die kits, like 3200MHZ CL14 and 3600MHz 16-16-16.

Which cost so much that nowadays their price starts approaching doubled capacity normal good kits!
And command interleaving improves memory access bottlenecked gaming performance such amount, that countering that with single rank would need very tight manual timings.
Also obviously being able to get 32GB for not that much more than 16GB is better for future proofness of PC.

Now of course if PC has GPU costing upward £2000, then memory should be tight latency Samsung B-die.

My 16 Gb crucial dimms are dual rank.

And performance wise 2x16 overclocks much better and manages lower latencies than 4x8 Gb.

2x16 dual rank is the best way to go, and as you mentioned needing samsung B die, yes I would personally get either that or micron E die.

Pre builds typically come with neither and use the cheapest junk ram the builder could find.

Same components you and everyone else buys and uses.

And dealing in 8Gb modules is far more common and flexible for upgrade paths until you need to go pass 32Gb which isn't so common.

I would never buy 8 Gb modules, or populate more than a single channel, and preferably pick boards with only one channel's worth of ram slots as even the distance from CPU to the dimms affects ram overclocking.

All pre builds are junk. I hope you at least know you have to remove the tape / plastic cover with the big 'REMOVE BEFORE INSTALLATION' sticker on it from the bottom of CPU coolers? My last pre built didn't, and I found out a lot of people get pre builts that don't.

 

[EsaT]

My 16 Gb crucial dimms are dual rank.

And performance wise 2x16 overclocks much better and manages lower latencies than 4x8 Gb.

2x16 dual rank is the best way to go, and as you mentioned needing samsung B die, yes I would personally get either that or micron E die.

Original Crucial Ballistix DIMMs with rev.E Microns (x-die is Samsung naming) were with 8 Gbit chips, because of server memories hogging all higher capacity chips.
Same for over 8 Gbit chips from Hynix and Samsung going to server memories for some time.
That resulted in 16GB desktop DIMMs being pretty much automatically dual rank. (16 chips with 8 bit wide connection)

But now Crucial 16GB DIMMs are likely all with 16 Gbit chips.
Only sticks themselves have number telling what capacity chips they use:
M16FE1 means 16x 8Gbit chips of rev.E and M8FB1 means 8x 16Gbit chips of rev.B.

That leaves only old 20nm node Samsung B-die with its 8 Gbit chip max capacity as only one guaranteedly giving dual rank 16GB DIMMs.
And really only reason why Samsung has been manufacturing those is that high end memory makers pay that higher price of 20nm node giving fewer chips per wafer.
Samsung EOL'ed their own DIMMs with those chips two years ago.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Original Crucial Ballistix DIMMs with rev.E Microns (x-die is Samsung naming) were with 8 Gbit chips, because of server memories hogging all higher capacity chips.
Same for over 8 Gbit chips from Hynix and Samsung going to server memories for some time.
That resulted in 16GB desktop DIMMs being pretty much automatically dual rank. (16 chips with 8 bit wide connection)

But now Crucial 16GB DIMMs are likely all with 16 Gbit chips.
Only sticks themselves have number telling what capacity chips they use:
M16FE1 means 16x 8Gbit chips of rev.E and M8FB1 means 8x 16Gbit chips of rev.B.

That leaves only old 20nm node Samsung B-die with its 8 Gbit chip max capacity as only one guaranteedly giving dual rank 16GB DIMMs.
And really only reason why Samsung has been manufacturing those is that high end memory makers pay that higher price of 20nm node giving fewer chips per wafer.
Samsung EOL'ed their own DIMMs with those chips two years ago.

Right, then you need to do a bit of extra work to make sure you get dual rank 16 Gb modules.

The issue here is that the people that make ram are themselves clueless about it.

 

[EsaT]

Right, then you need to do a bit of extra work to make sure you get dual rank 16 Gb modules.

The issue here is that the people that make ram are themselves clueless about it.

Buyer can't know because products names/numbers in package are same and that data is visible in only some secondary product codes.

And design engineers certainly know the differences.
But marketing likely doesn't let them change product name/number.

Actually it would be possible to have 16GB dual rank DIMM with 16 Gbit capacity chips...
But that would require those chips to have different 16 bit (instead of normal 8 bit) wide bus for four of them to make 64 bits of memory bus width.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

And design engineers certainly know the differences.

They don't. I've emailed them extensively. They (crucial) don't know what B die or E die is, and I doubt they would know about single vs dual rank too.

If you want proof of that try emailing their technical support and asking about it.

 

[EsaT]

They don't. I've emailed them extensively. They (crucial) don't know what B die or E die is, and I doubt they would know about single vs dual rank too.

If you want proof of that try emailing their technical support and asking about it.

It's no wonder if they are messed when you ask them about Samsung parts.
Micron uses rev "letter" naming.
And would be "little" hard to make working DIMMs, if engineers didn't know the differences.
Also bean counters might get somewhat angry, if DIMMs had double capacity chips compared to intended and what's charged for.

Consumer support has nothing to do with engineers doing product design work.
Doubtfull many consumer support persons have even basic electric engineering/electronics knowledge.
And if they know/get info from engineers, it's likely suit clowns of adminisphere, who decide what kind of information is allowed to told to consumers.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

It's no wonder if they are messed when you ask them about Samsung parts.
Micron uses rev "letter" naming.
And would be "little" hard to make working DIMMs, if engineers didn't know the differences.
Also bean counters might get somewhat angry, if DIMMs had double capacity chips compared to intended and what's charged for.

Consumer support has nothing to do with engineers doing product design work.
Doubtfull many consumer support persons have even basic electric engineering/electronics knowledge.
And if they know/get info from engineers, it's likely suit clowns of adminisphere, who decide what kind of information is allowed to told to consumers.

Nooo, Micron B die and Micron E die, as reported in Typhoon Burner.

They are mixing both together onto their current Ballistix 3600, along with the single and dual rank.

They would neither tell me which kits used which chips, nor knew anything at all beyond 'I can see the product is in stock, would you like to buy it?'.

They are mixing single rank inferior Micron B die in with the dual rank E dies to maximize profits and cheat customers, the packets also don't have their 'Rev 1x8 / 2x8' lettering to denote single or dual rank on them.

M16FE1 means 16x 8Gbit chips of rev.E and M8FB1 means 8x 16Gbit chips of rev.B.

This right here basically. Nobody working for Crucial's 'technical support' knows anything about stuff like this, or they don't have any more technical support and all such requests go straight through to their sales.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Well I went and channelled my inner Karen at Crucial live chat again:



This time he seemed to have a clue.

 

[EsaT]

Nooo, Micron B die and Micron E die, as reported in Typhoon Burner.

Which doesn't use manufacturer's naming in every place.
Micron uses revision to differentiate different chip designs in part numbering.

Samsung is the only one using explicit letter-die naming officially.
https://static6.arrow.com/aropdfcon...7/98g_b_ddr4_samsung_spec_rev2_1_feb_17-0.pdf
And there are differents ones at least from A to F-die.
So some E-die should never be used from Microns.
And even "Micron E-die" is only half acceptable, because if forgetting that Micron it's all about Samsung parts.

Hynix again uses clearly different three letter designations like AFR, CJR, DJR, MFR.
Though again if using just one letter, that's not any Hynix specific designation and would be comparable to going to shop to buy "vegetable growing underground"...

Hence best to always use rev-"letter" from Microns, "letter"-die from Samsungs and all three letters from Hynix chips.

 

[TheVoice]

I guess it depends on budget and what you are willing to spend just as much as requirements. You could tell someone not to buy a Ferrari as most of the time they won't go over 30mph. It's human nature to default to getting as much as you can for your purchase even if you don't use it all.

Except a Ferrari is still a Ferrari at 30MPH, it's not all about performance. 128GB of RAM only becomes useful if you need 128GB of RAM.

It makes sense to budget it that way, but the only issue for me is that if it's never going to get used then that money would be better invested in something else, e.g. replacing an HDD with an SSD, upgrading the graphics card, higher model CPU, better monitor and so on, which will be noticed every day.

Agreed. RAM is an easy upgrade later down the line, put the money towards something tangibly useful now or don't spend it at all.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

Except a Ferrari is still a Ferrari at 30MPH, it's not all about performance. 128GB of RAM only becomes useful if you need 128GB of RAM.

I disagree. 128GB is useful when you need more than 64GB. (unless you like to run with mixed sized dimms)

 

[sybaris]

The argument is when would one need 128GB, I guess if I hit that issue I just buy another 64 GB

 

[Dave2150]

By the time you need 128GB, DDR6 will be out.

Get a decent 32GB kit of 3600 C16, best price/performance ratio currently. Upgrade to DDR5 when it's mature in a year or two (Probably around the time of Raptor Lake).