Question Upgrading RAM for i5 6400

[jesynn]

Hi, I'm looking to improve my system performance slightly and wondering what kind of RAM can best be utilized by my setup and what kind would be useless to pay extra for.

I decided to look into upgrading because under load during a demanding game the fans crank up loud and I assume it runs very hot. I also get some stutter glitching but once everything smooths out the frames are solid. I'm getting a SSD too which I hope will help this and figured faster/more RAM might also improve the stuttering...

I currently have 8gb installed and there are slots for 2 RAM chips. Strangely in task manager/performance/memory tab it does not show whether they are DDR3 or DDR4 as I've seen it is supposed to, it only shows 8gb. Googling I found it says this cpu supports ddr4 so I was going to go for that but I have some concerns about power management and overall heat.

What should I consider? I've seen speeds of ddr4 up to 3600mhz and as low as 2400mhz. I also read that there are other factors such as timing and several other things to determine the overall speed and usefulness of the ram... but that if the processor cannot use the full speed it will be useless to get anything higher.

Does higher speed/faster ram utilize more power? and cause more heat? My PSU is a Delta 500watt and my GPU is a Nvidia 970.

Could the power supply be the bottleneck? Could it be heat and the hard drive and ram not be a factor at all? I have been digging around for awhile and still unsure about these concerns. Thanks for any suggestions

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

It depends on your motherboard which RAM speed you can support. I can tell you that if this is a prebuilt system with an i5-6400, it is limited to DDR4 2133. You may gain some performance with 16GB RAM instead of 8GB, but your CPU is likely being maxed out in more demanding games. RAM is cheap right now though. What you could do is buy a nice 16GB kit, doesn't matter the speed because your motherboard will auto-default to 2133MHz either way. RAM is best used in kits, when you mix and match different RAM it can cause issues and might not work together. Best bang-for-your-buck RAM is DDR4 3200. It is faster than your average 2133 or 2400 and only costs $5-$10 more.

If you wanted to only spend the bare minimum, what I would do is install HWInfo64 and see what your RAM timings and voltages are and then buy another 2x4GB kit that matches that.

But you can buy DDR4 3600 (it will only run at 2133 depending on your motherboard) and then you could use it whenever you build a new system with a better motherboard.

 

[jesynn]

thanks for the reply. so it's not a concern to overbuy the ram then? it won't waste unnecessary power or heat/etc?

I installed cpu-z and took some screen shots of my ram and cpu. The mhz listed seems low but not sure if that's just what it's showing currently or etc...

https://i.ibb.co/Ct1mSdZ/ram.jpg


Also the cpu seems like it's running 3.0ghz even though it's 2.7 stock so I'm guessing it's OC'd? Could that affect game performance and cause more stuttering than if it wasn't pushing itself?

https://i.ibb.co/T4zBKGK/cpu.jpg

anyway, just interesting...

As for ram I don't care about price, they seem to be all around the same within 10-15 dollars as you mentioned, i'm just looking for the best performance. The prices seem odd though,

This one for example has a higher mhz speed but is cheaper : https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Veng...=sr_1_13?keywords=ddr4&qid=1577084192&sr=8-13

Than this one : https://www.amazon.com/ADATA-16GB-3...words=ddr4&qid=1577084392&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&

I guess obviously different brands are different but I also see they don't list the timing speeds which an article mentioned affect the overall speed. Ah well. I guess I'm probably overthinking it and it won't really matter eh? So I can just pick and choose at random and it'll be an upgrade lol. heh. This game recommends 16gb so I'm hoping at the very least adding more memory will smooth it out a bit

 

[jesynn]

update : i installed the ssd i got the other day and reinstalled the game (mechwarrior 5) to it and i am experiencing like 500% improved gameplay. lol. no glitch stuttering and crazy faster load times. I also changed the page file to the ssd and even though I've read it's bad to waste read/writes on ssd drives seems to have made it run flawless. I intend to experiment with switching it back to the regular hdd c: drive to compare if that's necessary tomorrow.

I was about to just pick a set of ram chips around 3000mhz at random but then i did more research and some threads said the voltage can be high on some vs others and since my mobo is older that seemed like a potential concern... here's another img of my motherboard :

https://i.ibb.co/4TgFsSR/mobo.jpg

should i go for something specific being that it's older? appreciate suggestions, thanks

 

[jesynn]

i now researched more and i think i understand what you said. that my motherboard's maximum ram speed it can read is 2133? and buying anything higher than 2400 will not improve anything, but as you said i could use in a future build. The only thing I'm still unsure about is if choosing high end chips @ say 3600 mhz will be a power drain / heat hog and effect overall system functionality even though it will only be able to use up to 2133... or if that even matters. The price difference is so negligible but I want to get the most performance increase possible. Also seems really hard to find info on the timings and how those compare from brand to brand model to model.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

i now researched more and i think i understand what you said. that my motherboard's maximum ram speed it can read is 2133? and buying anything higher than 2400 will not improve anything, but as you said i could use in a future build. The only thing I'm still unsure about is if choosing high end chips @ say 3600 mhz will be a power drain / heat hog and effect overall system functionality even though it will only be able to use up to 2133... or if that even matters. The price difference is so negligible but I want to get the most performance increase possible. Also seems really hard to find info on the timings and how those compare from brand to brand model to model.

Just as the RAM will only run at 2133, the RAM will also run at the lower 1.2V instead of the higher 1.35V. And even then, 1.35V is still rather low and doesn't overheat.

Also, your CPU runs at higher frequencies because of Turbo Boost. It's standard on all i5 and i7 CPUs from Intel. Your i5-6400 can run up to 3.3GHz on a single core. The i5-6400 has a locked multiplier, so it cannot be overclocked except for the very uncommon baseclock overclock capable only on Z-series (or X-series) motherboards from Intel.

That Corsair RAM kit looks good. They make good RAM modules.

*Edit: Oh! and your RAM speed is showing 1066MHz because RAM runs at double-data rate (DDR) and is advertised at the double-data rate. So 1066MHz is effectively 2133MHz. It can be off by a few MHz, but that's just variations in each motherboard.