A few days ago, I said I was going to build a new PC, and that I had ordered the parts. Today, the first part arrived - and what was the first component?
RAM!
32GB of delicious G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3600 Memory with a CL16 Rating.
This is the sweet spot for Ryzen 3xxx CPUs, and will pair nicely with my 3900X when it arrives.
Initially, I wanted to build a machine with 64GB of RAM...
My current machine has 32GB of RAM, so I tried to push it until it broke. In an unrealistic use-case scenario ....
- 20+ Chrome Tabs
- Photoshop with about 10GB of files open
- Word
- Excel with three large Spreadsheets
- Usual background tasks
- A game running....
I broke about 20GB of RAM usage. That's with Photoshop set to only leave about 10% spare memory to the rest of the system, which meant I still had an enormous 12GB of headroom left in memory.
I don't imagine that is something I will fill any time soon unless I dramatically upgrade my cameras or change my RAW Photoshop editing flow all that much. Neither of those things is bound to happen any time soon, so the 32GB of RAM will do - for the time being.
I've now got to wait for the Motherboard, CPU, and m.2 nvme SSD to arrive before I can start to decomission my old machine, which is going to be a sad, sad time. At least it will give me the opportunity to cable manage some more! :D
In addition, I've found a second hand PC store that will net me around $280 for the parts I'll be retiring, which will help me recoup some of the costs of the new build. Who knows, I might even then have a budget for ... more RGB?
Everyone knows RGB adds huge performance gains, right?
This is what the old rig looks like at the moment...
I will be reusing the Case, 280mm closed loop cooler, GPU, powersupply, and my other drives (2x1tb SSDs), 1x6TB, 2x4TB, and of course the power supply.
This is going to be a fun machine to build. It will be my first ever AMD machine!