Should I upgrade just my memory or upgrade my entire PC?

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joy83

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Dec 13, 2010
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Hi everyone. Here is my gaming desktop PC that I built in 2011.

Motherboard - Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3
Processor - Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.40 GHz
Memory - Corsair Vengeance 8 GB (2x4GB) Dual Channel DDR3 @ 1334 Mhz
Graphics - EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB
Power Supply - Thermaltake 750W

This is still a beast (at least for the games that I play like Overwatch, Path Of Exile etc.). I run 2 24 inch monitors with it and have 25 tabs open on Chrome most of the time. Sometimes I see that around 90% of my memory is being used when I play a game and also have Chrome open in another monitor.

Should I add 2 more sticks of RAM to get to 16GB or is it not a good investment at the moment?

I don't plan on playing any demanding games, so I'm not sure if I should upgrade the PC itself.
 
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Do you notice any impact on your performance? Do you understand that Window creates a pagefile on your HDD/SSD which it uses as "virtual memory", so that when it can no longer store everything it needs in system RAM it will move things it deems less important to the HDD "virtual memory" to free up the system RAM for more important data. This all works fine, technically, it's just that the HDD (or even a fast SSD) is much, much slower than system RAM, so if you all of a sudden need the data that's been paged into the virtual memory, it takes much longer to get it and you will generally notice that in a massive dip in performance.

There's really no benefit to have RAM sitting empty, so Windows (and other modern operating systems) will...
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Kavinqt

Kavinqt

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Jan 26, 2014
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It is a very good idea, Just make sure you get the exact same RAM sticks :) Overall though if all you want is more RAM then yeah 8 more gb's will help out a lot. More than upgrading your GPU? Probably not But if you don't need it then you are fine.
 
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rhysiam

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Mar 24, 2013
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Do you notice any impact on your performance? Do you understand that Window creates a pagefile on your HDD/SSD which it uses as "virtual memory", so that when it can no longer store everything it needs in system RAM it will move things it deems less important to the HDD "virtual memory" to free up the system RAM for more important data. This all works fine, technically, it's just that the HDD (or even a fast SSD) is much, much slower than system RAM, so if you all of a sudden need the data that's been paged into the virtual memory, it takes much longer to get it and you will generally notice that in a massive dip in performance.

There's really no benefit to have RAM sitting empty, so Windows (and other modern operating systems) will often keep all sorts of things in RAM just in case it needs them again in future. It's also actually pretty good (mostly) at knowing the really performance critical data to keep in system memory, and what to move to HDD without having a massive impact.

What I'm saying is, just because your system is "using" 90% of your memory doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem at all. There's only a problem if you notice the computer slowing down because critical data ended up on the HDD/SSD... then it's time to get 16GB.

What you might notice is that when you exit a game and flick through your Chrome tabs, the first time you go to each tab there's a noticeable delay before the tab content appears. But once opened, you can flick between recently viewed tabs instantly. That's because your game needed the RAM and Windows moved the Chrome tab content to your virtual memory. Once you exit the game and need the data for the tab back, it has to be loaded first off the HDD (slow), but once back in memory it's all fine again.

TL DR... do you notice it being slow? if not. You don't have a problem. I tend to think 8GB is just fine. Unless you really want all those 25 tabs to load instantly even with a game in the background.
 
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