If you want to go with 8gb of ram, I would use two (2) sticks of 4gb RAM instead of just 1 stick of 8. It will be the same amount of RAM in the end, but it will be faster. Just keep in mind that motherboard has 4 DIMMs, and if you are using 2 sticks of RAM to only install them in slots 1 and 3, or 2 and 4. You don't have Windows on there either, but you may be planning on using a different operating system. The only other piece of advice I would give, if it's within budget, is to add a SSD.