1. #1

    16gb Ram (2x8gb) £55/£58 Need help choosing :D

    Hi all so recently amazon have this great deal on Corsair Vengeance Ram, £55 and £58. They are both 2x8gb 1600mhz and im planning on buying 2 sets so i have 32gb to make my pc future proof for the next 3 years.

    However one has bigger heat spreaders and is £3 more. My question is, will there be performance difference? Will my pc actually over heat more? I have no plan on overclocking and £6 to go for the bigger heat spreaders is really no biggy for me so im willing to do it, however if theyre the exact same in cooling capabilities then obviously id like to save the £6.

    Here are the 2;
    ("low profile")
    http://amzn.to/VYRlIE

    (standard heat spreader size)
    http://amzn.to/TjPVKw

    Thanks in advance

    Also 1 more question, is this generally the best upgrade per £ at the moment? I have an i5 3700k @ 3.4ghz, 8gb Corsair Vengeance Blue and a GTX580 at the moment, i feel like 32gb Ram would see the best upgrade for the money at the minute, i'm probably going to save for SLI 670's/680's or save for the next nvidia gfx card series after i make this purchase.

  2. #2
    If all you intend to do is gaming then 16GB IS overkill but this deal doesn't sound bad, 32GB would be a pure waste of money
    Unless you have poor cooling a higher profile cooler isn't necessarily and could reduce the aftermarket CPU coolers you have to chose from.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Yeah 32GB is waste of money. 8GB is enough for gaming but if you really want to buy something, go for the low profile corsair (2x8, total of 16GB).
    I don't know anyone whose RAM would've overheated without overclocking.

  4. #4
    Ok thanks, just looked into it more, seems 16gb is pretty futureproof to be honest ^^ doesnt seem to be much upgrade in terms of rendering speed or gaming from 16gb vs 32gb according to some forums so ill save the £55. Thanks guys

  5. #5
    You will never need 16GB if you're gaming only, before DDR3 becomes obsolete anyway.
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rning/advanced
    i5-3570k @ 4.4ghz - R9-280X @ 1150Mhz on stock voltage - 8GB of DDR3 Ram @ 1866Mhz

  6. #6
    Deleted
    12 gig for OS and running game, 20gig ram drive
    Yeah I would do it for the sheer hell of it if you can afford it.

    However as others have said 16GB is all your likely to need.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Octohoof View Post
    However one has bigger heat spreaders and is £3 more. My question is, will there be performance difference?
    There would be no performance difference. But it will help you to keep your memory at lower temperature, thus increasing overclocking potential.

    It all depends on your motherboard. If there is space for bigger heat spreaders, then go for it. On some motherboards you cant really install such modules because it will prevent either your cpu cooler or your videocard from fitting properly.


    Quote Originally Posted by druidizer View Post
    If all you intend to do is gaming then 16GB IS overkill but this deal doesn't sound bad, 32GB would be a pure waste of money
    Unless you have poor cooling a higher profile cooler isn't necessarily and could reduce the aftermarket CPU coolers you have to chose from.
    There can't be "overkill" when you are talking about such small amount of memory as 32GB.

    Its true, that no modern game would ever use more than 10GB, and that OS+background applications would not use more than additional 4GB.

    But it will allow you to gain performance increase.
    The most obvious way would be to create a 16GB ramdisk.
    Than you can move your swap file to this disk and gain a significant performance increase. You'll see how smooth alt-tabing can be if you have swap on ram disk.
    Its not a secret that windows writes data to swap file all the time, no matter how much memory you have. Disabling swap file would not help, because instead of caching applications will just drop unneeded data and then get it again from their files. Some applications can act weird without swap file. Ramdisk swap file can do miracles.

    Or you can just install your favourite game to this RAM disk and get almost instant loading. (hint: you need much more memory than 32GB to install wow on ram disk , but for most games it works just fine)

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by traen View Post
    There would be no performance difference. But it will help you to keep your memory at lower temperature, thus increasing overclocking potential.

    It all depends on your motherboard. If there is space for bigger heat spreaders, then go for it. On some motherboards you cant really install such modules because it will prevent either your cpu cooler or your videocard from fitting properly.




    There can't be "overkill" when you are talking about such small amount of memory as 32GB.

    Its true, that no modern game would ever use more than 10GB, and that OS+background applications would not use more than additional 4GB.

    But it will allow you to gain performance increase.
    The most obvious way would be to create a 16GB ramdisk.
    Than you can move your swap file to this disk and gain a significant performance increase. You'll see how smooth alt-tabing can be if you have swap on ram disk.
    Its not a secret that windows writes data to swap file all the time, no matter how much memory you have. Disabling swap file would not help, because instead of caching applications will just drop unneeded data and then get it again from their files. Some applications can act weird without swap file. Ramdisk swap file can do miracles.

    Or you can just install your favourite game to this RAM disk and get almost instant loading. (hint: you need much more memory than 32GB to install wow on ram disk , but for most games it works just fine)
    Ive currently got vengeance ram at the moment with the big heat spreaders and the space is fine.

    God damnit youve almost convinced me to buy 32gb now with this whole ramdisk thing, however alt tabbing is pretty instant anyway so i dont know if i can justify the £55 extra for 16gb more, i guess it will drop again around next summer so can always get it then if need be.

    Think ill put the extra £55 into a fund for a new gfx card or a next gen i7.

    Thanks for the help guys Merry Christmas!

  9. #9
    I purchased the more expensive of the 2 and they seem to work great. I was even able to fit my Cooler Master Hyper TX3 - CPU Cooler next to it though it was a little tight.
    I did OC my ram up to 1866 and it still runs cool. Also like the looks of the memory heat spreaders.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by jholdaway View Post
    I purchased the more expensive of the 2 and they seem to work great. I was even able to fit my Cooler Master Hyper TX3 - CPU Cooler next to it though it was a little tight.
    I did OC my ram up to 1866 and it still runs cool. Also like the looks of the memory heat spreaders.
    Yeah theyre really nice looking, my current ones are blue which matches my asus motherboard but black will look good too i reckon Gonna order them as a christmas treat

  11. #11
    The Unstoppable Force DeltrusDisc's Avatar
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    Low Profile always.
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    Quote Originally Posted by mmocd061d7bab8 View Post
    yeh but lava is just very hot water

  12. #12
    Herald of the Titans Will's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Confined View Post
    You will never need 16GB if you're gaming only, before DDR3 becomes obsolete anyway.
    I have to agree with this. Future-proofing is a decent sentiment, but if you future-proof too far ahead, it becomes a false economy. This is especially prevalent with graphics cards and memory, where advances often represent significant improvements in efficiency, thermal management and performance.

    I tried OC'ing my RAM above 1,600 but noticed no appreciable differences whatsoever. There really are diminishing returns with RAM frequency, for your standard gaming.

    I also tend to monitor memory usage and gaming rarely, if ever, comes close to using 8 gigs. I'd only consider buying more if I got into some serious video processing or decided to become a multi-tasking power user.

    Future-proofing in general is quite moot. With PSU's it makes sense because if you buy one that isn't up to par, you have to buy another to replace it, plus I cannot foresee any revolutionary advances in power supply technology that will make the current generation redundant coming any time soon. But since RAM is simpler as you can just add more sticks, there's no sense in future proofing because, if you're getting performance you want, then why bother? And if you need more RAM at a later date, then you can simply add more at a later date.

    I often experience a lot of people boost their PC when in actuality they don't NEED the performance boost. Personally I only bother upgrading when I actually NEED the upgrade.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 06:12 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Octohoof View Post

    However one has bigger heat spreaders and is £3 more
    I got the more expensive one because the spreaders look awesome. No other reason, but hey if it helps keep temps slightly lower, all the better for the hardware right?
    Last edited by Will; 2012-12-24 at 06:10 PM.

  13. #13
    The Unstoppable Force DeltrusDisc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Will View Post
    I got the more expensive one because the spreaders look awesome. No other reason, but hey if it helps keep temps slightly lower, all the better for the hardware right?
    RAM at 2400MHz barely gets hot... those heat spreaders are pretty much 100% aesthetics... that make you unable to use like 80% of air coolers.
    "A flower.
    Yes. Upon your return, I will gift you a beautiful flower."

    "Remember. Remember... that we once lived..."

    Quote Originally Posted by mmocd061d7bab8 View Post
    yeh but lava is just very hot water

  14. #14
    Herald of the Titans Will's Avatar
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    well if that's the case then I'd leave it to mere aesthetics. The heat spreaders look so mean I've seen some ppl liquid cool their ram for whatever reason. Odd.

  15. #15
    The Unstoppable Force DeltrusDisc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Will View Post
    well if that's the case then I'd leave it to mere aesthetics. The heat spreaders look so mean I've seen some ppl liquid cool their ram for whatever reason. Odd.
    Aesthetics - and they don't realize their RAM doesn't get *nearly* hot enough.

    The air naturally going through your case is more than enough to cool it. :P
    "A flower.
    Yes. Upon your return, I will gift you a beautiful flower."

    "Remember. Remember... that we once lived..."

    Quote Originally Posted by mmocd061d7bab8 View Post
    yeh but lava is just very hot water

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by DeltrusDisc View Post
    Aesthetics - and they don't realize their RAM doesn't get *nearly* hot enough.

    The air naturally going through your case is more than enough to cool it. :P
    much higher clocked ram can but its definitely looks, but some is necessary as its more to keep the entire chip @ a stable temp.

    As for 32gb of ram, it would really only be useful on heavily multi layer 3d work. MMmmm for instance creating an entire war cinematic w/ weapons that are true to reality i.e every part is actually going to be rendered from screw to hammer, in this case you could easily eat 20gb+ but the time it would take a single person to build the scene would be astronomical thus why that kind of RAM is for Disney Imagineers.

  17. #17
    The Unstoppable Force DeltrusDisc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Milkshake86 View Post
    much higher clocked ram can but its definitely looks, but some is necessary as its more to keep the entire chip @ a stable temp.

    As for 32gb of ram, it would really only be useful on heavily multi layer 3d work. MMmmm for instance creating an entire war cinematic w/ weapons that are true to reality i.e every part is actually going to be rendered from screw to hammer, in this case you could easily eat 20gb+ but the time it would take a single person to build the scene would be astronomical thus why that kind of RAM is for Disney Imagineers.
    Very few people actually run 2400+ RAM though, to be fair. :P

    Virtual Machines will love 32GB of RAM. (Especially if you're running several at once and want them all to have at least 1GB of RAM.)
    "A flower.
    Yes. Upon your return, I will gift you a beautiful flower."

    "Remember. Remember... that we once lived..."

    Quote Originally Posted by mmocd061d7bab8 View Post
    yeh but lava is just very hot water

  18. #18
    Low Profile mate. Large heat spreaders interfere with a lot of the good aftermarket air coolers (D14, Phanteks etc).

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Octohoof View Post
    planning on buying 2 sets so i have 32gb to make my pc future proof for the next 3 years.
    DDR3 RAM will be probably outdated in next 1-2 years. DDR4 is already in production and will 90% certainly be used for the next gen Intel Haswell motherboards.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

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