Ram for 4690K

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
S

scharpshooter

Distinguished
Feb 23, 2009
99
0
18,660
I have purchased a 4690k, and an Asus Gryphon z87:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131977

I have an h100 AIO water cooler, and will be using my old Radeon 5770 until funds allow to step up to something in r9 390 / gtx 970 range, probably this winter

I plan on buying a 2x4gb kit, with intentions of buying a second kit next year. I understand the relationship of CAS to clock speed, but am not really sure what the sweet spot is. I can't really picture spending more than $60 for a 2x4 kit, as I could step into a very basic 2x8gb kit for $80.

This computer will be a jack of all trades - Basic image editing, some gaming, console emulation, internet browsing with a bazillion tabs, HTPC duty, you get the idea. I intend to overclock a bit to take advantage of the 'k'.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I suggest buying your full ram capacity now in one kit.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards can be very sensitive to this.
That is why ram vendors will NOT support ram that is not bought in one kit.

Moreover, it is much harder to get the motherboard to support 4 sticks vs.2 particularly when overclocking.

I think the sweet spot for haswell is 1.5v 1866.
Haswell does not improve actual app performance or fps more than a couple percent with faster ram.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/haswell-ddr3_8.html
Faster than 1866 will require more than the standard 1.5v and that can reduce the level of your overclock.



 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You increase the potential for issues when buying one 2x4GB kit now, and then another later for 4x4GB total. Even when RAM is the exact same model/brand/speed from different kits, small variations in manufacturing silicon and other manufacturing variations from different periods/cycles can be problematic. If you want 16GB RAM, buy one 2x8GB slightly slower kit now.

I find 1866 speed at a lower CAS optimal vs. say 2133 with a higher CAS. And if you want to overclock, definitely buy a kit of two memory modules to further reduce potential problems. Using all four DIMMs can be problematic for overclocking as well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


if you watch it to the part where there is a horse chase the GPU drops to 54% usage, the one with the faster ram is doing 100FPS more then the lower ram. That whole test is being GPU bound so thats why they are showing the same FPS. Take the GPU out of the equation and you will see the faster ram does help.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Good point about combining ram kits. Anyone care to speculate on DDR3 prices 12-18 months from now? Is DDR4 adoption going to drive DDR3 up? If prices are going to drop or hold steady, I will probably go 2x4 now and replace it with a 2x8 in the future. If they are going up, I may as well invest in the 2x8 right off the bat.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


But you will never get a gaming pc without a gpu and in games there is a 1 fps minor diference.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

My best guess is that ddr3 prices will change little.
When ddr2 was replaced with DDR3, DDR2 became a bit scarce and increased in price.
Unless budget is a really big issue, get your 2 x 8gb kit up front.

More ram generally trumps faster ram unless you are using intel integrated graphics.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom