memory for gaming?

[Gloock]

Hi everyone, I'm making my first pc build and idk how much memory i need, I do plan to use the pc for gaming only, I do plan to buy Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2 X 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz, But idk if 8gb is enough or maybe incease that to 12gb?
my sys spec are.
MSI B85-G43 Gaming.
MSI R9 380 4GB.
I54460.
XFX TS 550.

 

[Delroy Monjo]

I have never used more than 5.3GB of system RAM while gaming. Make sure you don't have unnecessary programs running in the background which suck up RAM. Use sysconfig to check and adjust what you have running at start up. Use Windows HELP for an explanation.

 

[Dunlop0078]

8GB is plenty for any game out right now. However in a few years that probably wont be true. So yeah having 12gb is a good investment for the future but you dont really need it for gaming as of right now.

 

[Gnuffi]

on a dualchannel board its technically best to go with 2 sticks, not 3
8gb should be enough but 16gb (2x8gb) and you would probably be set for a decade

 

[clarkjd]

8 GB should be plenty for current games. If you must have more, I would suggest a 2X8GB kit fot a total of 16GB.

 

[unksol]

8 is plenty. You don't want 12. It's either 8 or 16

 

[Gloock]

Oh, thanks for the answers, Can you please talk to me about the dualchannel thing? why should i use 2 sticks instead of 3? and can i use 4 sticks?

 

[lodders]

memory is so cheap these days, you may as well go straight for a 2x8GB kit.
hyper x beast is CAS 9, which is good (lower is better). Any other CAS 9 memory will perform exactly the same.

 

[Gnuffi]

Oh, thanks for the answers, Can you please talk to me about the dualchannel thing? why should i use 2 sticks instead of 3? and can i use 4 sticks?

memory on mobo's function in pairs, 2-3-4, depending on motherboards. this does not mean a dual channel motherboard(2sticks) wouldnt work if you put 3 sticks in, it just "might" perform a little under what it could", it would work fine with 4 sticks since thats 2x dual channel, but it would still possibly work a teeny tiny bit better with only 2 sticks (it would never be a performance hit you would physically notice in gaming)
so the rule of thumb is : use the amount of sticks as your board is "channels", i.e. 2 sticks for dual channel board, 3 sticks for triple channel, and 4 sticks for quad channel
yours is a dual channel board, so optimal would be to use 2 sticks

(you could infact just put a single stick in in all types of board and it would again work just fine)

 

[lodders]

Oh, thanks for the answers, Can you please talk to me about the dualchannel thing? why should i use 2 sticks instead of 3? and can i use 4 sticks?

Your mobo is optimized to use memory in pairs. Almost all motherboards are dual channel.
This is why so many memory makers sell kits containing a specially matched pair of sticks

 

[Gloock]

Oh, thank you for the great info, i guess i will go with 8gb for now

 

[Gloock]

But what kind of rams would be good for my mb and cpu? kingston or maybe something else?

 

[Gnuffi]

But what kind of rams would be good for my mb and cpu? kingston or maybe something else?

Kingston are solid, but in the end manufacturer very rarely matters, ram is ram
they might have different speeds an latency but again, for gaming you will not notice any difference from say 1600mhz ram to 2133mhz ram
a could thing is to get a fast CAS latency, paired with a decent MHz rating, CL 7 with 1866MHz is real sweet, but not "needed" CL9 1866mhz ram are just as fine
get what you can afford, Kingston, Crucial, G. Skill, Corsair, doesnt matter either. get whats cheapest
personally i never had an issue with kingston ram, they last me over decade in 3 diff builds,
but again personally.. i like the "look" of g skills, heatspreaders, but thats just aesthetics, and again not important for gaming

 

[Gnuffi]

side note: since i mentioned above 1866 Mhz and even 2133Mhz ram, you might think you should get those, but dont.
re-reading your OP, i notice you have the B board, which wouldn't support the higher Mhz, so in conclusion:
dont buy Ram higher than 1600Mhz, because your board wont support them(you can use them but it wont benefit from teh extra speed, it will just auto lower it to 1600, so dont waste money buying ram with higher speeds)