woth upgrading SSD and RAM

[silk186]

Would I notice any differnce through this update in regular use or gaming other than being able to install more stupidly large 50GB+ games?

If I upgraded from:

Samsung 830 256GB
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 1600​

To:

Crucial m550 512gb
HyperX FURY Series 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR3 1866MHz​

 

[JHefile]

You won't be able to tell a difference at all other than more gig on the SSD.

If I was you I'd just buy another SSD and just use it for some games. Leave the OS on the 256 SSD.

But if you use some program that is maxing out your 8gig mem then of course you'd be better with 16 gig but somehow I don't think you are maxing out the 8.

 

[Black5Lion]

Probably not, the 830 is plenty fast already.
I agree with @JHefile just get another SSD.
About the ram tho, I honestly can't tell you. If you find yourself maxing out the 8GB then by all means get more. What do I know tho? I'm still rocking 4GB (after my other 4GB stick died).

 

[silk186]

I really don't know about the RAM. I'm running win10 right now and I know that windows is designed to use all the memory you have so I don't know if increasing beyong 8GB would make any difference. Are games predicted to take advantage of more than 8GB within the next couple of years? I plan on upgrading to a Z97 ITX + i5-4670k when I can find a decent deal in the used market (in the UK) and will keep it until I can upgrade to something newer without taking a huge hit transitioning to DDR4 which I expect will take a couple years. I think that my 2500k and MB will retain some value in this market and the upgrade cost won't be significant if I'm patient.

I don't really need to upgrade my SSD but it would be nice to have more space. If it would make my system more responsive it would help justify the upgrade. Otherwise I should wait until M.2 has something to offer in my pricerange that would significantly increase my read speeds and hopefully help with boot and loading times.

So the consenses is that outside of specialized applications like video/photo editing 16GB is overkill?

 

[iamwhoiamtoday]

Just wondering, how many memory slots do you have? If you have four.... dropping in two 8GB sticks could help a good amount. Windows is pretty good about caching stuff in system ram. Especially if you have an excessive amount of it.

Regarding the SSD though.... tossing in a second SSD dedicated for games would be your best bet.

 

[silk186]

Currently I have 4 slots but I'm looking to move to ITX shortly so I would be down to 2 slots again. Also, I read that occupying 4 slots causes more difficulty with OC and puts more stress on the memory controller. I think that if I did upgrade my RAM it would be more cost effective to sell the 8gb and buy a 2x8gb 16gb kit.

 

[atp1916]

From a benchmark perspective, the 830 256gb is basically tied with the m550 512gb. The 550 does appear to have stronger random writes at certain blocksizes, so there is a possibility that your stuff may install a bit quicker with the 550. Regardless though, you will likely not see any sort of user experience change if swapped.

Same goes for the user experience on the ram if you're not maxing out that 4GB. Sometimes, having all 4 banks filled can limit the OC, but that's usually moreso your board's problem and with certain chipsets. My set of 4x4GB 2133 stuff has no issues running full timings, even @ 2200 on the Z77 chipset.

Now: you mentioned something about going to ITX. There is certainly merit going with a 2x8GB setup to match a future board ram slot constraint. Therefore, I agree with your thought process validating the move to a 2x8GB kit. Higher density ram is always better, especially with an ITX form factor target in your upgrade path.

 

[silk186]

It is that trouble with computers. I don't think that anything I do uses more than 8GB of memory but who knows the future of gamine. Likewise the future or DDR3 and DDR4 pricing. Is this a good time to buy DDR3, how long will it take for DDR4 to come down. With the second hand market I think I can flip my system every generation or two (used for used) without taking much of a hit.

 

[Dangman]

I really don't know about the RAM. I'm running win10 right now and I know that windows is designed to use all the memory you have so I don't know if increasing beyong 8GB would make any difference. Are games predicted to take advantage of more than 8GB within the next couple of years?

The only game that I can think of where 16GB of RAM would be recommended is Star Citizen. With that said, if you do other tasks on your PC besides gaming, 16GB of RAM doesn't really hurt anything besides your wallet.

I plan on upgrading to a Z97 ITX + i5-4670k when I can find a decent deal in the used market (in the UK) and will keep it until I can upgrade to something newer without taking a huge hit transitioning to DDR4 which I expect will take a couple years. I think that my 2500k and MB will retain some value in this market and the upgrade cost won't be significant if I'm patient.

Not really worth it. I'll tell you what I've been telling every person with a 2500K based gaming PC: Wait until 2016 for Intel's Skylake CPU release to upgrade your CPU for three reasons:
1) You really won't notice a large enough performance increase with the Haswell CPUs to justify the costs of upgrading. That should change with the Skylake release

2) DDR4 RAM should be a lot cheaper then. Even right now DDR4 RAM is a lot cheaper than a scant four months ago.

3) Current gaming CPU performance demands + current Intel's gradual CPU performance increases, + the possibility of more widespread adoption of AMD's Mantle and other bare-metal GPU APIs means that you don't have to upgrade the CPU as often. Hence why it's quite possible to have an Intel CPU for five years before needing an upgrade for a gaming PC.