Hello all,
I am interested in purchasing some new RGB RAM for my PC. I bought a solid prebuilt PC late last year with what I think are very nice specs. i9-9900k Processor, 2080ti GPU, liquid cooling, and a 1 TB SSD.
Two areas are somewhat lacking on the PC - I’ve heard the motherboard is just okay - I have a MSI MAG z390 Tomahawk. Also, it came with only 16gb XPG of RBG DDR4 RAM. I’d like to upgrade that for Shadowlands because I believe it may help with Ray Tracing performance. I could be wrong, but for whatever reason most of the folks who do not experience a significant drop in FPS when playing with ray tracing enabled seem to have 64gb of RAM. This is based solely on my anecdotal review of the forums and not technical knowledge. I also play other games, like COD and Apex Legends.
This leads to my question: I am interested in purchasing the following RAM for my PC - G.SKILL Trident Z Neo Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Intel XMP 2.0 Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C18D-64GTZN. I have installed RAM before and its one of the few tasks that is easy for me handle.
I looked to see if this RAM was supported on MSI’s website, and could not find that specific model number. Any insight into whether these particular RAM sticks are supported would be appreciated. It may be that MSI’s list is not inclusive, not updated, or that the RAM is truly not supported. I do not want to damage the motherboard or experience a drop in performance because I purchased the wrong product.
A another option would be the CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 4000 (PC4 32000) Intel XMP 2.0 Desktop Memory Model CMW64GX4M2K4000C18. This is also not listed as supported, and is more expensive, and I am inclined to go with the G Skill because at some point it may just be complete overkill for my needs.
Lastly, I am inclined towards RAM with two 32GB Sticks, rather than 4 16 GB sticks, because it will take up less space on the motherboard.
Again, any insight would be great. Thank you.
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Your CPU or RAM won’t affect Ray Tracing at all. If you want better Ray Tracing, you’ll need to shell out for the new RTX 3080 (only sensible upgrade from the 2080 ti, better conventional performance and much stronger RTX performance)
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Your motherboard appears to be a quality motherboard - unless the CPU is VRM throttling, or something is not functioning correctly, there’s no reason to upgrade.
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This game drops FPS all the time on every system, even on a 10900k and an RTX Titan, and in the same places as other people. More RAM beyond 16gb isn’t going to fix that. Exceptions are if you are some kind of insane multitasker. NO sane individual is going to tell you to get 64gb of RAM just for gaming. 32gb is overkill even. If they did, they’re trolling the fel energy out of you.
In closing, don’t spend a dime on RAM unless you’re video editing, play ridiculously large minecraft games, or play insane skyrim mods, and don’t buy a new motherboard.
If you want better RTX performance the only solution is the RTX 3000 series.
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Well that was a very helpful and quick response. Thank you.
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Also like to add, if you’re experiencing unusual performance drops, there’s likely something wrong with your setup vs. it just not being strong enough.
Your system is more or less STILL the most powerful gaming system out there, despite the existence of the 3900x (worse) and i9-10900k (same).
Ensure XMP is enabled in BIOS, report your load CPU temps/frequencies, and also your GPU utilization during games (for purposes of WoW, report this value when not in raids etc. because GPU utilization will be pitiful as its largely CPU bound)
You may also wish to go into your BIOS to remove power limit/increase max turbo duration. A lot of boards would try to limit the 9900k to the factory 95w TDP, which is stupid and just ends up throttling the CPU for no reason.
To your last point Salhezar: I don’t think there is anything wrong with the system because I experience great performance in almost every environment. I can play COD with ray tracing, and WoW runs at 100s of FPS in stressful environments like capital cities (Boralus is usually about 80 FPS with max settings).
Only ray tracing kills my performance – bringing my FPS down to 35 to 50 in areas like SW, Boralus, Duskwood, etc. Its not really a problem because the game looks about the same without ray tracing enabled, but I’ve noticed some people have not experienced the FPS drop and I don’t understand why. Their systems seem to be about the same as mine, notwithstanding the higher RAM.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
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This is normal - I’d say Ray Tracing in WoW is basically a proof of concept and nothing more.
New RTX cards would improve it, but I don’t really think it’s something the developers are expecting users to actually use.
Kind of like hairworks in other games.
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When you enable ray tracing on Turing, everyone experiences performance drops.