My PC 10 years old this month and I really need an upgrade, I have a newer GPU so only need the rest of the fucking owl.
The biggest issue of course is the RAM PRICE, Do I just take the plunge and spend €1800 on 128GB of 6000MT CL40 RAM? Or do I pay more/gb for 64GB of faster RAM?
I’m buying to last me another 10 years preferably. I’ll probably go for the latest top of the line AMD CPU and the best mobo/psu I can get.
I don’t really have a fixed budget but I’m trying not to spend the next 6+mo worth of money on an upgrade.
Any advice?
Edit:
I use it for work, I work in tech, I run a lot of memory heavy stuff, I use it for CAD, dev, gaming, etc. I’m constantly running at 90% ram utilisation on my 32gb ram. I’ll copy what I said below:
I’m sitting at around 90% utilisation constantly on 32 and FF keeps crashing because I’m out of memory.
I work in the tech field, so it’s sometimes docker, lots of CAD, games (often with said cad program and browser in the background)
Current specs: i7 7700k, 32GB DDR4, 2080TI
Since you’re planning on upgrading anyway why not just build a brand new PC? Since gaming is generally more hardware demanding leave your current PC for work and build a gaming PC. Putting the two together (especially with how you’re using it) you’re not only increasing the overall hardware demands but you’re also increasing the damage of a potential infection. I’m also pretty sure 2080ti isn’t going to last you another 10 years. The problem with the 20 series is that it hasn’t aged well. If you get everything else top of the line your system will be bottlenecked by the 2080ti.
I would build a separate gaming PC and cut the memory demands to buy a beefier GPU. The current PC I’d continue using as a work station.
It wont be sudden jet plane after a Ford Model T, it will be a mediocre upgrade that you wont simply justify.
If you say you utilize 90% of ram, then just get more ram. Maybe find the best CPU you can put in your socket even if it is used. 2080ti should keep you afloat for the next 5 years. You’d save quite a fortune by upgrading your hardware just ever so slightly.
But, again, unless you really need 5090ti and Threadripper with 192GB of DDR5 ram, go for it.
Your main bottleneck seems to be RAM. In that case I’d just put in another 32 GB and then wait for this whole mess to sort itself out. DDR4 is less ridiculously overpriced than DDR5, so that should be doable without too much pain. If you spend a lot of money now, you’ll want to kick yourself when prices come back down to earth.
If you use it for work, shouldn’t your employer pay it for you? Or are you a freelancer?
Even if you spend €3000 to upgrade, if it’s going to last 10 years that’s €300 per year. Considering you seem to use it a lot and it’s for work also that seems fine to me. Yeah, we’d all like the prices to be sane again but it is what it is for now.
If it saves a lot of money short term i would maybe think of considering a maxed out am4 build? The CPUs available on that platform are still pretty dang good, ddr4 should be more affordable, would also allow you to buy more of it, assuming the amount of GBs is more important than the pure speed. Depends on the usecase i guess.
I did consider that too, but I think I’d rather just swallow some of that price not to have to do this again any time soon.
That’s understandable. It just sucks that these prices are like this right now. I’m still using an older am4 board that i maxed out a few years ago with the 5800X3D, so now i’m just trying to stick with that for as long as i can. Hopefully this pricing situation doesn’t last long, but i’m not very hopeful about that.
Neither am I, I don’t see it changing much in the next year or two.
I’m in the same boat. Honestly, even if RAM/storage prices dip in the next year or two, that’s still another year or two of potato computer. I have similar specs to what you have and it is getting long in the tooth, especially if I want to do any ML or run any of the local models. I used to have a 5 year amortization of hardware, but it didn’t make any sense to consider upgrading until a couple of years ago. And I’d spring for the faster 64GB RAM. You can always add in another 64GB of the same speed. And it will be faster since multi-channel compared to a single 128GB stick
Thank you, you get it.
And thanks for the advice
Do I just take the plunge and spend €1800 on 128GB of 6000MT CL40 RAM?
Even if your DIMMs are speced for high data rates, you may not be able to achieve it with a full 128GB with the current crop of processors if you’re using slotted DIMMs rather than soldered memory.
I saw something about that, that they struggle with large memory sticks, does it slow down overall performance?
Well, it’s slower than what one could theoretically achieve if you could run that much at that rate. I believe that the MT rating is per stick and the memory is used interleaved, so it’s not that you put in 128GB and the overall throughput spanning all sticks drops, but rather that you won’t get the throughput that the more-expensive memory is rated for.
I have a Framework Desktop that’s running 128GB of soldered memory at 8000 MT/s. In contrast, my desktop can only manage 3600 MT/s on 128 GB of slotted DIMMs.
$ sudo dmidecode -t memory|grep Speed Speed: 4800 MT/s Configured Memory Speed: 3600 MT/s
What hardware do you have and what are you upgrading for, if you don’t need that much of a performance boost then you could just get a pi zero and it would still probably be better hardware. Unless the GPU is pretty modern in comparison to the rest of it, when just go for any cheap PC or even a used office one.
If I buy something I want to buy the best I can afford to last me for the next 10 years at least. I don’t often spend money on my PC.
Currently it’s an i7 7700k, 32gb ddr4, 2080ti.
Im looking for a proper workstation, I spend 70% of my time on my PC.
Edit: just realised I typoed, it’s 10 years, not 20, sorry.
10 vs 20 makes quite a difference, but spending that much and planning for it to last over a decade might not be a good idea - it is likely to be cheaper to buy lower spec a bit more often. Especially if you look at second hand parts.
It’s tided me over pretty well for the last 40 years, I’ve had 3 PC’s for the last ~23 years.
I usually buy the best I can within budget, with upgradability in mind, I upgraded my CPU, GPU and RAM on my current PC.
You don’t need that much performance if you’re coming from a 20 year old pc.
Buy for what you need today, upgrade later.
Just realised I typoed, it’s 10 years, not 20, sorry. I updated the post with my specs
What are you doing on a 20 year old PC that would necessitate 128GB of memory on the new one? 32GB should be sufficient when it comes to ram for most users. 64GB max. Even for the next 10 years.
I’m sitting at around 90% utilisation constantly on 32 and FF keeps crashing because I’m out of memory.
I work in the tech field, so it’s sometimes docker, lots of CAD, games (often with said cad program and browser in the background)
Edit: just realised I typoed, it’s 10 years, not 20, sorry.
Maybe just not run everything at once? If you’re gaming then you’re not working and you can shut down Docker and CAD. Or just get a Steam Machine. Way cheaper than trying to buy 128GB RAM.
You may want to check if that’s 90% of active utilization or things just holding onto the memory “just in case”. If your running CAD, gaming, and have containers actively running at the same time, then yeah 32GB may just be cutting it, but I would find it suprising that you’re actively using 90% frequently.
I guess more ram could mean not having to worry about spinning the containers up and down, but the only time I hit anywhere near 32GB is when doing heavy data workloads and those are times I’m not worried about running anything else.
I have one thing that drives my RAM usage up to about 45ish GB (64GB in my desktop) and that’s Star Citizen, and the whole reason why I installed 64GB.
Outside of that though, it is nice to have the headroom to basically do whatever I want, and multitask like crazy. But I rarely see my usage get over 25GB outside of SC.
For reference, this is on my desktop running Nobara
Impressive that you were able to do any CAD on a 20yr old PC. Then yeah you sound like you would benefit from more ram though even at the pace that CAD has blown up in size, I also work in teac with CAD (NX/Creo) 64GB is sufficient. Even over the next 10 years that should be enough. As far as Firefox and other browsers in general they’ve added so much bloat I’m not surprised it’s running out of memory. Good luck! And
Sorry, I made a typo in my original post, I meant to say 10 years, which changes things dramatically 😅
VS code and the rest of the BS JS applications really do chew through memory. Though the other day I realised that the Terraform linter in VS Code for Linux has a memory leak.
No lie there. Seems that devs have given up on optimization in software. Fear that trend will continue with all the vibe coding. Hell in 10 years you might need 512GB if that trend continues!!
It’s better to get whatever you need to be comfortable, and upgrade later when prices get more affordable. So, for instance, you can get a 64 gb now, then get a 64 gb later for a total of 128 gb. Though I think it’ll really depend on exactly what you’re doing - for me, I would consider even 64 gb to be insanely futureproof.
I was also thinking that, do you think it’s still worth it if the cost/gb is reasonably higher?
I assume you mean to get a higher-clocked 64 gb? Personally, I’ve never really felt the difference between different memory speeds. I’ve seen the benchmarks, I know the numbers. But I’ve never had a moment where I’m using my computer and I can say that the memory speed is bottlenecking my PC.
So in my eyes, memory clocks are quite low priority for me - I put more weight in ensuring that you have the total memory capacity to do what you need to do. Which is to say, if you have the money to spare, then sure, you can get higher-clocked memory. But if not? I don’t see the problem in getting lower-clocked memory.
Additionally, if you get an X3D chip (which I assume is one of your considerations), those are known to be fairly resilient against memory clock speeds, in which case it extra does not matter what your memory clock is
I wouldn’t jump straight to 128GB right away at these prices. 32GB gets you by then you can upgrade that when prices are more reasonable.
