cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Recommended RAM: Gaming

Shadow277
Level 7
I have been searching the internet lately for answers about recommended RAM for gaming.
Yes, I will be mostly playing Blizzard games for now. I just finished my PC yesterday and I was curious if I had mistakenly bought 2x4GB for 8GB of RAM @ 3000MHz.
My thought was that if I need more RAM, just by another 2x4GB so I will have 16GB total with 4 PCIe slots filled.
Should I refund my 8GB of RAM and spring for 2x8GB for 16GB of Corsairs? I have:
Asus Z170-AR motherboard
i7 6700K
2x4GB=8GB RAM @ 3000MHz
GTX 1060 6GB
CX750 Bronze Edition

Thanks everyone!!
1,204 Views
7 REPLIES 7

Nate152
Moderator
Hi Shadow277

G.Skill Trident Z is good, I'm using 16GB Kingston Hyper-X Predator.

It's best to get a single 16GB kit rather than combining 2 sticks to avoid potential problems.

Even if all the RAM sticks are the exact same?

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Yes, even if "same" make and model. They are in fact not the same...have not been binned to work together. That platform is more forgiving in this respect and you will read success stories...but many failures too.

Nate152 is right...just get a single kit.

http://www.techspot.com/article/1043-8gb-vs-16gb-ram/
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?57038-Don%92t-combine-memory-kits!-The-meat-and-potatoes-ov...

yamatosan
Level 8
8GB is enough for any Blizzard game. 16GB is nice to have.
More GB means more stress on your CPU memory controller and sometimes need some tweeking in the Bios.
But i7 can run nicely with 16GB.

Shadow277
Level 7
Update: I returned the 8GB kit and bought 2x8GB for 16GB. That should hold me until I need to build another PC?

Nate152
Moderator
16GB will last quite a long time for gaming and is a good choice.

What ram kit did you get?

JustinThyme
Level 13
Ill chime in as well as to the importance of buying kits and go one further to try your best to buy one of the kits that are listed on the approved vendors list for your MOBO.
16GB is usually plenty for gaming although I have had some games that pushed that 16GB to the very edge of saturation. I'm always one to go with as fast as the MOBO can handle with the most capacity. Some will argue that you cant OC but I can prove differently as Im currently running a 6700K at 4.6 GHz 1.375 Vcore, 1.35 Vram with 64GB Gskill Trident 3400 MHz. I actually started with a 32 GB corsair dominator 3400 kit 4x8GB and the machine would not post. Went back and saw it was not on the approved vendor list and sent it back and got the 4x16GB Trident kit that works flawlessly. I go for more because I do a lot of batch photo process and a bit of video editing that uses every bit of the 64GB and screams for 128GB. I've never heard of higher capacity sticks causing undo stress on your memory controller, that's a new one on me and I've been at this a long time. My first PC was before the internet existed and it didnt have an HDD and memory was measured in kB. Either your system is rated for it or it isn't, pretty simple concept.



“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein