Hey Tad

[WhiskeyJack]

@Tadpui

While I have my DAW ripped apart I might make some minor upgrades. Of these two ram options:

PC3-8500 DDR1066
PC3-10600 DDR1333

Which one is the gooderest?

[Armistice]

Might depend on your CPU... if said CPU doesn't support higher speed RAM then no point installing it...

(That even sounds like I have a clue. )

[vomitHatSteve]

Might depend on your CPU... if said CPU doesn't support higher speed RAM then no point installing it...

(That even sounds like I have a clue. )

I think it's the motherboard, actually. The mobo busses have a maximum speed. Modern hardware will slow down the mobo buss or the ram as needed to match the slower component.

One thing to consider is making out your spaces. 4 matched 4 GB ram sticks will give better performance than 2 8 Gb sticks

[Tadpui]

Do you happen to know the make/model/chipset of your motherboard? And what kind of CPU you've got installed? Like the fellas above mentioned, that'll go a long ways towards figuring out what kind and how much RAM you can cram onto your board.

1066 MHz is the base clock speed of DDR3 RAM. Most motherboards can "overclock" RAM and will allow you to select between several different speed presets somewhere in the BIOS menu. Each stick of RAM is "binned" according to how it handles higher speeds. So the one labelled 1333 will have been found to be stable up to 1333 MHz, although you can always try higher speed settings at the risk of unstable performance. You can always boot back into the BIOS and set it back to a lower setting if things get squirrely on you.

Since DDR3 is previous generation, it should be relatively cheap. It was the standard for several years, so it should be plentiful as well. If we can figure out the specs of your mobo, we can look up the max RAM that it'll support and determine what capacity of sticks I'd recommend. I'm guessing it supports up to 32 GB, and that it has 4 DIMM slots. That'd mean that 4x 8GB sticks would max it out.

I've actually got several sticks of DDR3 8GB laying around somewhere. I had 2 old 4th gen Intel based systems that were both maxed out at 32GB of RAM. They're both in pieces, gathering dust in a closet, having been parted out to support the last couple of iterations of my current build. If I can find them, you're certainly welcome to them.

[WhiskeyJack]

Do you happen to know the make/model/chipset of your motherboard? And what kind of CPU you've got installed? Like the fellas above mentioned, that'll go a long ways towards figuring out what kind and how much RAM you can cram onto your board.

1066 MHz is the base clock speed of DDR3 RAM. Most motherboards can "overclock" RAM and will allow you to select between several different speed presets somewhere in the BIOS menu. Each stick of RAM is "binned" according to how it handles higher speeds. So the one labelled 1333 will have been found to be stable up to 1333 MHz, although you can always try higher speed settings at the risk of unstable performance. You can always boot back into the BIOS and set it back to a lower setting if things get squirrely on you.

Since DDR3 is previous generation, it should be relatively cheap. It was the standard for several years, so it should be plentiful as well. If we can figure out the specs of your mobo, we can look up the max RAM that it'll support and determine what capacity of sticks I'd recommend. I'm guessing it supports up to 32 GB, and that it has 4 DIMM slots. That'd mean that 4x 8GB sticks would max it out.

I've actually got several sticks of DDR3 8GB laying around somewhere. I had 2 old 4th gen Intel based systems that were both maxed out at 32GB of RAM. They're both in pieces, gathering dust in a closet, having been parted out to support the last couple of iterations of my current build. If I can find them, you're certainly welcome to them.

Cheers man. That is uber helpful.

My mother (who worked in IT before she passed away) put the fear of god in me about certain upgrades and ramp was one of those she told me to somewhat mindful of.



those are specs from the HP website. this model of tower hasn't been modified at all so it is still the "stock" mobo and cpu and chipset and all that. According to that website, i guess i can can only upgrade this unit with one of those two types of ram? that is how i am interpreting it anyways? I am using windows 7 home premium 64bit and my research says i can upgrade up to 90+gb's of ram. right now i have 8gb, (two sticks of 4gb's) and in a perfect world I'd love to have 32 but i think even bumping up to 16gb would be fine for running Ezdrummer and amplitube and whatever other vst's i might like to have a kick at. every thing is stable right now at 8gb but like you said that kind of ram is pretty friggin' cheap right now so why not beef it up. Cheaper than a new computer.

[Tadpui]

Wow, I haven't seen a 16GB limit on RAM in a loooong time. How old is this machine?!? I think my last machine that had such limits was from 2005 or so.

Let me dig around my PC graveyard this afternoon and see what all I have kicking around. Heck, I could probably build you a new(er) system out of spare parts from my closet-of-broken-toys. I'm not sure how shipping it to Narnia would work, but I'd be willing to give it a go. I think that all I'd need would be a chassis and an HDD that isn't riddled with old porn and viruses

[Tadpui]

I bet I can cobble together something. I may have a tech hoarding problem...

P1230005.JPG

The newest/nicest option would be the X370 board with the Ryzen 7 1700. But that board may have fried when I tried to upgrade to my Ryzen 9 3900X. I haven't had the heart or will to test it out since the incident. Who knows, it might still work. There's 32GB of DDR4 RAM on that board too.

Next best would be the Asus Z97 board with the Intel 4790K, which was the cream of the crop CPU of the 4th gen Intel era. That was my gaming machine up until a little over a year ago. 32GB of DDR3 RAM on this one.

And next best would be the Gigabyte Z97 board with an Intel 4770 and 32GB of DDR3. I'm pretty sure that board is dead though, fried from an ESD zap when I plugged my e-kit into it one day. The CPU would work on the other Z97 board though. It's a rock-solid and respectable CPU for audio work.

I've got a couple of power supplies, lots of high-quality chassis fans, a spare SSD, even a spare graphics card. I think it'd just take an inexpensive compact chassis and a mass storage HDD to put together a pretty badass upgrade from that antique of yours

[WhiskeyJack]

I bet I can cobble together something. I may have a tech hoarding problem...

P1230005.JPG

The newest/nicest option would be the X370 board with the Ryzen 7 1700. But that board may have fried when I tried to upgrade to my Ryzen 9 3900X. I haven't had the heart or will to test it out since the incident. Who knows, it might still work. There's 32GB of DDR4 RAM on that board too.

Next best would be the Asus Z97 board with the Intel 4790K, which was the cream of the crop CPU of the 4th gen Intel era. That was my gaming machine up until a little over a year ago. 32GB of DDR3 RAM on this one.

And next best would be the Gigabyte Z97 board with an Intel 4770 and 32GB of DDR3. I'm pretty sure that board is dead though, fried from an ESD zap when I plugged my e-kit into it one day. The CPU would work on the other Z97 board though. It's a rock-solid and respectable CPU for audio work.

I've got a couple of power supplies, lots of high-quality chassis fans, a spare SSD, even a spare graphics card. I think it'd just take an inexpensive compact chassis and a mass storage HDD to put together a pretty badass upgrade from that antique of yours

Holy shit lol!!!

Man if you think we could do it as an experiment or whatever we could discuss it dude! I can shoot you an email later maybe? I'd want to do my research first RE: getting it into Canada. I know it can be a bit of a fuck around if there is software on there. I have a story about my brother being detained and having all his shit confiscated at the border when trying to reenter Canada after a work training seminar in Florida. Our employer didn't have the right (any) forms filled out and needless to say CBP lost their shit and basically treated him the same as someone trying to import 50lbs of crack. Missed two return flights until he could prove it was the company that fucked up and not him.

In all honestly this current rig is probably circa 2005 or so. Sandy Bridge i7 CPU windows 7 machine HP shit box. I got it second hand, put a 125 GB SSD on as the operating system and i have a 7200 RPM secondary drive that records the audio and runs programs and stores samples etc. It runs really nicely for what I'd need it to do. Honestly 0 complaints. I have had a few glitches with it but it always just seemed like operational kind of stuff. never when it came to recording. When I tried to bench mark it last year to see how it's health was, i was able to load multiple instances of ez drummer, like 8 instances of amplitude and a bunch of reverbs and it still barely seemed to make a blip in performance. I would never have a project set up like that normally, i was literally trying to just overload it to see how much it would take to kill reaper.

I'll shoot you an email tonight once the dust of my day settles.

[Armistice]

Might depend on your CPU... if said CPU doesn't support higher speed RAM then no point installing it...

(That even sounds like I have a clue. )

I think it's the motherboard, actually. The mobo busses have a maximum speed. Modern hardware will slow down the mobo buss or the ram as needed to match the slower component.

One thing to consider is making out your spaces. 4 matched 4 GB ram sticks will give better performance than 2 8 Gb sticks

Damn, I was close though!

[Armistice]

I bet I can cobble together something. I may have a tech hoarding problem...

P1230005.JPG

The newest/nicest option would be the X370 board with the Ryzen 7 1700. But that board may have fried when I tried to upgrade to my Ryzen 9 3900X. I haven't had the heart or will to test it out since the incident. Who knows, it might still work. There's 32GB of DDR4 RAM on that board too.

Next best would be the Asus Z97 board with the Intel 4790K, which was the cream of the crop CPU of the 4th gen Intel era. That was my gaming machine up until a little over a year ago. 32GB of DDR3 RAM on this one.

And next best would be the Gigabyte Z97 board with an Intel 4770 and 32GB of DDR3. I'm pretty sure that board is dead though, fried from an ESD zap when I plugged my e-kit into it one day. The CPU would work on the other Z97 board though. It's a rock-solid and respectable CPU for audio work.

I've got a couple of power supplies, lots of high-quality chassis fans, a spare SSD, even a spare graphics card. I think it'd just take an inexpensive compact chassis and a mass storage HDD to put together a pretty badass upgrade from that antique of yours

"Ultra durable" - sounds like a condom...

[Tadpui]

"Ultra durable" - sounds like a condom...

LOL it does I never quite understood their touting "ultra durable" on their motherboards. It's not a product that tradesmen are tossing in the backs of their pickup trucks for a hard day of sweaty work out in the field. It's a freaking motherboard! It's going to go inside of a stationary desktop PC, where the worst it'll be exposed to is weed smoke and ambient amounts of Cheeto dust

[vomitHatSteve]

"Ultra durable" - sounds like a condom...

LOL it does I never quite understood their touting "ultra durable" on their motherboards. It's not a product that tradesmen are tossing in the backs of their pickup trucks for a hard day of sweaty work out in the field. It's a freaking motherboard! It's going to go inside of a stationary desktop PC, where the worst it'll be exposed to is weed smoke and ambient amounts of Cheeto dust

New ultra-durable design: can withstand 3x the cheeto dust of the competitor