Source
r/buildapc•
showbreadrules

[Build Help] Is it worth it to throw away my RAM?

So, a year ago I built a decent set, but I skimped out on RAM since I didn't need a lot then and I knew the prices would come down. Since Diablo III is out, I figure it's time to upgrade. This is the RAM I have, and this is the mobo. I want to buy a ~$100 set of 2x8GB, something like this. Anyways, should I buy a different set of RAM than the one I linked, and is it worth it to keep the RAM I have or will it bring down the speed of the new RAM?

Posted May 30, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

17
taueln•

You can get 16 gigs of ram for about 80 bucks. Also, people like me would buy your ram. :P

2
eeryowl•

You might not need to upgrade at all, run task manager and see how much RAM you're actually using. Diablo 3 alone probably isn't using up your 4 gigs.

1
showbreadrulesOP•

I actually don't have Diablo III yet, but I often have over 10 tabs open in Firefox, music playing, Thunderbird running, and a few LibreOffice docs up. This ends up with me running out of memory and having to close programs. The tricky part is whenever I try to run a VM.

1
eeryowl•

VMs are greedy for RAM. I would stick the 8GB DIMMs in the primary slots on the motherbaord and move the smaller sticks to the secondary slots. No reason not to keep both sets.

1
showbreadrulesOP•

How do you know which slots are primary and which aren't?

1
eeryowl•

According to page 16 of the manual, the white slots (DDR3_1 and DDR3_2) are where two modules would go for optimum performance. So I would put the 8GB sticks there.

1