New Build: RAM 32 or 64GB

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
21

Completely unrepresentative though, since the single 16GB stick is not working dual channel and is hence at half speed. It’s a terrible idea to not mount memory dual channel. You’ll need two 8GB sticks for comparison.

I did a thread a while back on whether you need 32GB RAM: Do you need 32gb RAM, and if so why?

The answer to that seems to be no, not really, not anymore since it’s now optimized to run with 16GB.

OP should note that DDR5 is actually slower with 12th Gen Intels than DDR4 is. If you are going for DDR5 now, then that is only for sake of reusing it with some different system in the future, otherwise you’ll be paying more for less. And future proofing right now (or at least the last I checked DDR5 prices were quite high) might not even make sense.

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22

Pointless having more than 32GB for MSFS.

23

Also DDR5 isn’t worth it compared to DDR 4 at least not yet. So you can save you some money buy getting DDR4 unless moneys no option and your board doesn’t support it.

Future proof go with DDR5. Save money DDR4.

24

its a bit unfair compare, or ?.. single vs double-channel :laughing:

I would pay for the 64GIG RAM… There are so many situations where you can stay much more relaxt if your apps consume bit more memory. ( example: with my 64G , I have a pagefile of 1G, so mostly never slow paging is used ). If you plan doing additional video editing or similar memory intensive stuff, you are again better with 64GIG. The performance of both sticks is similar and you will not realy notice a 400Mhz RAM speed difference.

2 Likes
25

If you can afford 32GB do it.

MSFS might “now” be optimised for 16GB but people don’t just play one game.
Star Citizen uses 25GB of my RAM.

Cheaper to buy 32GB now than 16GB then 32GB next year.

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The question is do I go with 32GB or 64GB at the cost of 400Mhz?

27

MSFS specifically will benefit more from the extra 400Mhz (a bit) than it will benefit from the extra 32GB (you most likely won’t gain a single frame). Both would probably lose few frames in comparison to 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz CL16 ($150) due to faster timings on DDR4.

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There’s usually not a big difference when it comes to the speeds. Maybe a 1-3% if not a little more. You ant to waste money go higher speeds.

29

Go with 64GB never hurts to future proof your system. Since you already have the 12th Gen. Even though the 13th Gen is coming out when Ryzen 7000 series comes out to compete with them.

Plus future games and hardware will probably need the extra bandwidth and quantity of ram.

30

Imo, 32GB is overkill in many situations unless you plan to run many VMs or run Docker.

31

Go for the 32 and get the speed. Its enough now for msfs.

32

was overkill 15 years ago :rofl:

1 Like
33

Just for MSFS, 32 GB is completely fine and likely will be for a couple years to come.

If the the $197 dollars saved on ram can be put towards a better GPU, then that’s where your biggest performance gain will come. The extra ram won’t hurt of course, but you will notice no benefit whatsoever.

34

The sim recommends 32gb. I have 64gb because I do other things like editing photos and videos. So just for the sim 32gb is good.

If you do other things that require more 64gb+

1 Like
35

I have seen other threads making reference to being able to cache scenery on 64gb systems. Is this done automatically or is there some way I could manually force MSFS to reserve 32GB for terrain caching?

36

Try this, a guide is several posts down.

37

Right. However… 2x32GB ‘might be’ better than 4x16GB

Why? XMP timings can get screwy with 4 channels on some memory controllers. Mine didn’t when I upgraded from 2x16 to 4x16, but that’s because of the XMP timings of my particular premium RAM modules.

I tested with 32GB and 64GB, and saw no difference in RAM timing or latency.
You can search the web and find horror stories of people having to set RAM timings manually.

The heck with that. :wink:

38

I was just looking at the QVL listing for a new Gigabyte Z790 motherboard.

I wanted 2x32.

But the only 2x32 kits were for 6000 or below.
All 2x32 below 6000 were ranked, 2R8.

Everything above 6000 were 2x16 and all were 1 ranked, 1R8.

I bought 4x16 @ 7200, 1R8.

I don’t know if this applies to other motherboards.

39

Thanks for the thread… Since I got my pre-built PC, I always wanted to add another 32GB of RAM as I always felt my PC should have way more than my 3090 GPU with 24GB as it was in the previous PCs I had…

But I think now this is irrelevant and just my old school brain that wanted to add more PC RAM than GPU :grimacing: