RAM 16 GB? 32 GB or more?

@ole!!! Optane SODIMMs can't come fast enough!

What we have now are crude and rudimentary imitations of what RAM and it's weakling cousin, mass storage, should be doing for us going into 2020.

I don't want just fast mass storage, I want the storage in RAM already!

And I'm not talking about in supercomputers either. I want it all the way from my phone to my desktops too.

I can't wait to be talking on a thread about those capabilities (soon!).

 

Overkill is underrated!

While my systems all seem like overkill to many (okay; all) that see them, they were not just projects with $$$$$ thrown at them. Each piece, each component is there because it either makes workloads/workflows go by faster or, it makes the system more responsive to me when I'm at the controls. Anything that gives me more of either of those qualities is well worth throwing a few more paper notes at.

 

16 gigs as a minimum for any basic productive system that does more than just surf the web at less than 10 tabs, check email and do office stuff.

32 gigs minimum for any non-basic system.

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

@jaybee83 last week I visited a client's office and recommended the same for them.

While 64GB of RAM would be useful to them in one or two of their more heavily used workstations, it is still an option for them in the future. The 'office' machines connected with 10GB LAN and with current 4C/8T processors, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD's and dual (and triple) monitor setups as a minimum will not get me any friends there either (there is no excuse now to get an extra coffee break because the 'puters are slow).

And yet, I still have clients that are running decade-old hardware on Windows 7 Pro!

Each time I mention that the clock is ticking on those old systems, they gently but firmly show me the door.

 

A majority of all the laptops and sff desktops from Dell still all have 8gb for their systems sent to clients.

Though the 7820s I'm handling have 32GB of ram but I think those are for 3d rendering on MRI and other medical scanning techniques

 

@TheReciever I was reading your post earlier with my client reading it over my shoulder too.

His question? What is my stance over what Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. silently say on this topic (e.g. for almost all their 'default' configs; 8GB RAM must be enough...)?

So I then asked him if there is a spare computer I could use, rebooted that system and then started 'Automatic Maintainance' manually and let it run while we talked for a few moments.

While Maintenance was still running, I then asked him to look up something on the web using that system and he was shocked how slow it was to load not only the browser but also the website I requested too.

He was assuming that the older QC (Core Gen3, i7) was the bottleneck. Actually, there was 16GB RAM installed (9.9GB in use, 2153MB Paged pool) and the bottleneck was the storage subsystem (1TB 850 EVO) that was at close to 100% Active time for over half an hour.

With more RAM, Windows wouldn't need to 'protect' the physical RAM it does have access to, and the load on the SSD would be lessened too (either in Active time, total duration or both).

He tried to state that this slowdown isn't seen in the normal workflows of that workstation, but when I asked him what he was comparing it to (hopefully an identical platform with 32GB RAM instead), he laughed.

I like how he declared the 'issue'; we're not the only ones using our systems, the systems are using themselves too.

 

Well I manage various configurations but it's not what dells deems necessary but the client.

For example I go through 1000s of wyse thin clients where I believe its literally use for onbaording patient information and that's it.

Then I have the sff desktops which have 8gb but run like crap, and may well just be the first boot kind of thing, but they use them as team workstations.

Then we go through quite a bit of mobile precision which have 16gb, fancy precision 5530, 7490s, 7200, various 2 in 1 as well. The precisions always come with 16GB while the others have 8gb generally.

I also have 3630 desktop precisions and the aforementioned 7820 which both have 32GB.

To answer your clients question, it has nothing to do with what they think is enough versus how much money it costs for them to assemble the machine. If it's cheaper for Dell or Lenovo to have 8GB minimums on their machines it's because 4GB dimms are no longer as cheaply supplied. You'll notice it's not 2x4GB in many cases its a single 8GB dimm which would actually hurt your performance versus 2x4GB. It all comes down to how cheap they can source everything. Why sell a Configuration like that? Because it's cheaper for then to assemble from sourcing the compoent to automated install. It's an economies of scale kind of scenario.

 

As years go by, I tend to agree with your approach more and more. Not sure if it is experience or wisdom. =p

 

Yea, just doing basic tasks like web browsing, watching youtube videos, Netflix and so on barely uses half of my RAM unless i have a lot tabs opened on Firefox. Even work applications performs very well, Upgrading to an SSD really revived this laptop.

Windows 8.1 works great on this system and i like to have more control of my PCs but obviously my new laptop will have Windows 10 since i've no choice in the matter but i'll tweak it as much as i can and using the guides here on NBR. Any OS will be fast using an SSD even on Windows 7 since HDDs was always the bottleneck in most systems. Over the years I helped family and friends that was thinking about buying a new PC because it was so slow even on Windows 10, so i told them to upgrade to an SSD and they was so happy about the performance gain and saved them so much money on buying a new system lol.

Personally the only reward i see about upgrading to 32GBs of RAM on a new system that i dont have to upgrade anything anytime soon. I rather spend extra money to futureproof the CPU and GPU since both components cant be upgraded on most laptops. Gaming will be one of my main tasks that i'll do on a new system and work related stuff and if 32GBs of RAM become the new standard in a few years from now then i'll gladly upgrade when the time comes!.

 

Halloween cringe horror time, I spent 400 on these a year ago : https://www.newegg.com/hyperx-32gb-260-pin-ddr4-so-dimm/p/N82E16820104720

It wasnt long after that various governments got fed up with the dram cartel that prices fell to nearly what they are now. To think I could have easily have 96gb of ram right now with that amount