New Build: RAM 32 or 64GB

Doing a new build, is 32 GB of RAM going to allow me to have MSFS2x + 3-4 supporting apps like charts, etc open and running. Does anyone have a suggestion of weather I should buy 32GB of DDR-6000 at $339 or 64GB of DDR-5600 at $536?

I am asking in terms of how much better DDR-6000 vs DDR5000 is in terms of performance and how much better performance I would get with 32GB or 64GB of RAM?

Platform
CPU: i9-12900k Alder Lake
MB: EVGA z690 Classified
GPU: EVGA 2080 Super 8GB
HD: (Windows) Crucial P5 Plus 500GB PCI 4.0
HD: (MSFS2x) Crucial P5 Plus 1 TB PCI 4.0

$339 -RAM: GSkill Trident Z5 DDR5-6000 (2x16GB) CL36.36.36.96

OR

$536 - RAM: GSkill Trident G5 Z5 DDR-5600 (4x16GB) CL.36.36.36.89

I don’t see a significant difference with my 32GB over the original 16GB so I think 64GB would be overkill.

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64GB if you fly 4K and install a lot of apps that run toghether with MSFS. You won’t get more FPS, but your PC runs more stable when multiple apps run simultanously.

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There’s no such thing as too much RAM.

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I fly in VR and have never come close to using all of the 32GB of RAM in my PC.

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Sam here, Sim EFB, Little Navmap, MobiFlight, Voice Attack and Discord

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I should add I run 4k natively and the most it has used is 21… even with all the stuff running in the background.

Too much RAM isn’t a bad thing, but if the extra cash can be put to something else you may get more value from that. Its certainly not needed for MSFS.

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64GB - production pc

8-32GB Gamer PC.

Simple as that.

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My view as well. If it doesn’t put a dent in you budget: go for it.
However: IMHO it should be the last extra. CPU and GPU are more important.

Most likely you won’t get any more performance from more RAM.

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Absolutely, yes, for sure.

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Prior to changing the sim memory usage for xBox the sim RAM regularly got pretty high and at times used about 28GB. With Discord, Twitch and few other apps opened like Little NavMap or Navigraph and of course other routine stuff running in the background, the system exceeded 32GB and would page and stutters would be introduced.

On my old PC due to that, I upgraded from 32GB to 64GB. And stutters went away.

If MS/Asobo opens up more RAM utilization for PC users, 32GB would be struggling to keep up. So invest in the future and go with 64GB!

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Totally agree, I have 128GB. Some of my photography stuff eats up a lot of RAM. 64GB for me would not be enough.

Go for 64GB if you’ve got it in your budget. It will all get used for caching previously loaded data over time as you play. Cached data doesn’t show up as “in use” in the task manager because the data is no longer actively being used by the application it belongs to, so it can be overwritten without causing any issues if some other app needs to use that space. IE, it can be used the same as free space. This cached data shows up as “Standby” in task manager if you hover your mouse over the memory composition graph. If you check it after playing for a bit, you’ll see that there’s very little truly free space left in the memory, its all labelled as “Standby”

The benefit of this is that if the application once again needs to use some data that it has previously used and that data is still in the cache, it wont need to pull it from the slow storage drive again. The more memory you have, the more data can be cached like this and the less likely it will be overwritten by MSFS itself or some other application. This helps reduce annoying stuttering when approaching busy airports and stuff like that.

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I have no issues with 32GB Ram, MSFS in 4k, blender working on the other monitor as well.

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Most I can get the sim to use is 26GB. That’s maxing out everything pass the default ultra settings.

I have a 5900x and a 3080 so that might make a difference but yep. Nothing more than 26GB of ram. So I’d say if you don’t do that you can live with 32Gb and be good.

But I’d go 64GB just encase you want to record your stuff or something like like.

It’s harder to run 4 sticks with DDR5/Z690, you might have to drop the ram speed.

I’d go 2x16GB unless you need 64GB for other apps. 32GB is enough for Flight Sim.

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meanwhile my work computer is a 1.5TB mac

:wink:

Ultra settings

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Yep, thats my CPU and RAM but I’m not seeing any difference.