Does the Sandy Bridge platform only allow 16 gigs of ram?

[Trixie5]

Hello I recently just bought a i7-2600k. And I heard that it cant use more then 16 gigs of ram. Is this true?

 

[beenthere]

Have you tried a Google search or checked the CPU specs at the Intel website?

http://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel-Core-i7-2600K-Processor-(8M-Cache-3_40-GHz)

 

[runswindows95]

It's not a question of the CPU, but the motherboard. There are at least 100+ motherboards on Newegg that can handle 32GB. However, couple things:

1) The biggest RAM kit you will find for desktops is 16GB. There is a 8GB DDR3 RAM out there, but it's $300 just for one. You're talking about $1200 just to get 32GB of RAM. You can get a nice 16GB kit for $100.

2) Unless you are running high end applications, games will not even push 8GB of RAM. From what I've seen, most of them barely push 4GB. To push 8GB of RAM, you will have to be doing a lot of Photoshop, HD video editing, or CAD work.

3) The other limited factor is the OS. I know Windows 7 Home Premium maxes out at 16GB. Which is fine considering even 8GB is overkill.