Question Ram Upgrade Questions

[Heart_Collector]

I bought this computer a few years ago from Cyberpower (Disappointed in build quality), it has I think two 8 gig sticks of DDR 4 3200 Crucial Memory if I remember correctly.

I was wondering if it would be worth upgrading to 32 gigs and maybe even getting faster memory. I don't know very much to be honest I haven't built a computer in 15 years and time goes fast. I was looking on Gigabytes support page for my motherboard and they had a downloadable file that showed compatible memory and it had some 3400 ram on there.

So my questions.

1. Should I just mix and match with whatever ram is in there and not waste the money on buying 32 gigs from scratch?
2. Is there a way to find out what's in there exactly?
3. Should I just get all new matching ram, should I try to get faster ram ex: 3400 over 3200?
4. If I decide to use the ram I have and supplement it with new ram, do I need to get two more 8 gig sticks or can you mix a 16 with two 8? (Currently windows task manager says I have two 8 gig dimms now).

Trying to put a little more zip into my system and future proof it, and I also do audio stuff in fl studio but usually don't come close to hitting my ram cap at all. I play some games ex: one being Factorio that I've heard said more ram can help performance. Kind of looking down the road at future games like MSFS2020 and thinking maybe more ram could be beneficial.

I don't know if the rest of the system matters but ill throw it in to save potential time.

I7-6700K (I think it might be liquid cooled? But I've never added any liquid and it has no external reservoir, I've also wondered if I should maybe overclock but then I think about how little I know and decide its a bad idea lol!) , Geforce 1660 Ti (Upgraded from 970 gtx last year, what a good move, I was gaming in pain man). 16gb Crucial DDR4 3200 in two 8gig dimms? G1Sniper-Z170 motherboard. Pretty sure I bought some crazy 800-1200 watt thermaltake power supply to future proof it at the time, was thinking about maybe dropping in a 2080 Super as a hold over for building a new computer and maybe upgrading to 1440p gaming with high refresh rate at some point. Kind of sick of being way behind the curve. Thanks in advance for any help or advice!

This is my first post but I use to ghost this place all the time 10+ years ago when I was more into computers and always enjoyed the articles and knowledge everyone had. I am hoping to be around more in the future as my computer interest is increasing again. I decided I even want to build my next system and that might not be too far off. But also hello everyone!

 

[Unolocogringo]

You probably would not notice a ram upgrade in speed or adding another 16 gig.
A nice fast NVME or PCIE m.2 ssd would make things snappier.

Your 4 core CPU is what will hold you back in gaming the most.
Overclocking will help a lot with higher FPS on games that use 4 cores or less.
Games that like more cores will have lower minimum frame rates. And less consistent frame rates.

The 2080 Superwould be a huge upgrade. Held back slightly by the 6700 but overclocking the cpu would make it much less.
At higher resolutions the 2080 will slowly become the bottleneck.

 

[Heart_Collector]

You probably would not notice a ram upgrade in speed or adding another 16 gig.
A nice fast NVME or PCIE m.2 ssd would make things snappier.

Your 4 core CPU is what will hold you back in gaming the most.
Overclocking will help a lot with higher FPS on games that use 4 cores or less.
Games that like more cores will have lower minimum frame rates. And less consistent frame rates.

The 2080 Superwould be a huge upgrade. Held back slightly by the 6700 but overclocking the cpu would make it much less.
At higher resolutions the 2080 will slowly become the bottleneck.

Ah that's what I was kind of afraid of but wasn't sure, and it's so cheap compared to how much it use to be I was hoping it would be beneficial some how.

I am going to use this as inspiration to look up some how to overclock though. The bios has options that looks like it's as easy as changing them but it's never that simple. I will look in the case and figure out if its a super fancy air cooler or if it's actually some kind of self contained liquid cooling for the cpu, as will be more comfortable giving it a try if I have ample thermal headroom. I tore apart some old storage looking for the invoice that came with the computer of all the specs at the time after I did this post but just couldn't find it.

 

[Heart_Collector]

You probably would not notice a ram upgrade in speed or adding another 16 gig.
A nice fast NVME or PCIE m.2 ssd would make things snappier.

Your 4 core CPU is what will hold you back in gaming the most.
Overclocking will help a lot with higher FPS on games that use 4 cores or less.
Games that like more cores will have lower minimum frame rates. And less consistent frame rates.

The 2080 Superwould be a huge upgrade. Held back slightly by the 6700 but overclocking the cpu would make it much less.
At higher resolutions the 2080 will slowly become the bottleneck.

I just wanted to thank you, I was messing around with overclocking and started doing checks on userbenchmark and I realized it was reporting my ram was 2133mhz. I looked in the bios and it was indeed set to that, it turns out its not DDR4 3200 but 2800, but 2133mhz is a big jump! I cant believe Ive been running under for years lol!. I think i'm just going to pony up the bucks to get 3200 or 3400.

 

[Unolocogringo]

wrong thread.

 

[Heart_Collector]

I had success in completing a 4.0mhz to a 4.6mhz overclock and at least getting through the Userbenchmark quick tests and posting high percentage results. When it does the stress test though the highest temps reported by Temp Core are 89c something i'm not comfortable with so I reduced the clock back to normal for now. I tried tweaking voltage but couldn't get it to post and complete the the stress test without at least 1.35v. Stock being 1.27. I know this is out of topic for this thread I will maybe continue a new oc thread but will do more searching and utilize existing info.