Some advice sought - RAM Upgrade.

[Reggie]

Hi All, 

Some advice sought here - I have been having some issues with "ghost key presses" on my X55 that some of you know about, this may require additional power, but I am trying a couple of other things first before I spend cash on a Power Supply, I would hope my 600w is enough for now. 

On the other hand, I have been noticing that things these days are needing more and more RAM - I have 16Gb at the moment, but have been having some performance issues in IL2 even offline. After seeing my RAM is also only 2133Mhz, and my MB can support up to 64Gb of RAM at 3800Mhz I am considering upgrading my RAM to 32Gb of 3600Mhz RAM.

Are any of you chaps pc hardware gurus that can tell me whether this is a worthwhile investment or not? Any advice/suggestions gladly received. 😁

[FoolTrottel]

As for additional power for the X55 - I'd rather be looking at a powered USB hub than a bigger PSU. 

To increase the amount of RAM and its speed should be good - but it will depend on the other hardware around it whether it would make it worth it ...

As for performance issues in GBS, I'd first be looking at CPU, then GPU - if you are at 16GB. 

 

[Reggie]

Hi FT - yes, I have an external powered hub which the X55 is now exclusively using. Next time I fly will tell me how much (if any) difference this has made. 

Regarding other spec of the machine - here it is

I think CPU should be ok. I know GPU is the major thing - but these aren't available, and cost a freaking fortune, £800+ for a GPU is out of the question right now - so I will leave that for now. Mother in Law is coming to live with us in a few months and all money is going into extending the house to make room for her. Will be paying that one off for some years yet  

 

[Jabo]

One thing you could check is whether or not XMP is enabled in the BIOS (hint - it should be enabled). 

With RAM, as with other computer hardware, it's the law of diminishing returns - you could upgrade to 32GB of 3600MHz RAM and you might see a performance increase but if your system is bottlenecking elsewhere, your mileage may vary. 

Best thing to do for starters therefore is to benchmark your system as it currently stands and then work from there - this site is pretty good (and free) https://www.userbenchmark.com/Software

It will score each of your components (RAM, CPU, GPU, HDDs etc) against a baseline and you can then use that to inform your decision about what to upgrade first.

[Crash]

You can also ask/look here https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/categories/hardware.1/

Lots of info in there

[Sid]

6 hours ago, Jabo said:

One thing you could check is whether or not XMP is enabled in the BIOS (hint - it should be enabled). 

With you there Jabo, enabling it a couple of years ago has allowed my 5 year old Asus X99A USB3.1 motherboard to set my RAM at it's native 3000MHz and into XMP mode.

My motherboard also has a TPU mode that allows a standard cpu overclock from 3.2GHz to 4.2GHz. I have also been running with that set for a couple of years.

However, I found that in order to get the XMP and TPU BIOS settings to 'take' and work I first had to enable 2 switches on the motherboard....if I didn't then I would have startup issues. Worth having a look in the motherboard manual to see if you have these switches.

[Reggie]

Thanks guys, I have looked at the MB - XMP is enabled, I have run the Benchmark, and the PC seems to score pretty well - results here:

UserBenchmarks: Game 92%, Desk 90%, Work 79%
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K - 83.5%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080 - 107.9%
SSD:  HFS250G32TND-N1A0A 250GB - 103.1%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB (2016) - 76.9%
RAM: Crucial CT8G4DFD8213.C16FBR2 2x8GB - 73.5%
MBD: Gigabyte GA-Z270-Gaming K3
 

[Jabo]

Looks to be pretty good to me Reggie - A RAM upgrade would be a good place to start - 16GB is plenty for GBS but if you're intending to run DCS or anything that uses a lot of system resources (like Adobe Photoshop for example) then 32GB will pay dividends. Go for 8GB sticks so you could upgrade to 16GB and have two slots free to upgrade to 32GB at a later date.

Oh, and don't pay extra for RGB memory unless you want RGB.

Checking out your mobo, I don't think it has the sort of switches that Sid's does, but the Gigabyte supports easytune for overclocking if you decide to go down that route.