16gb ram user experience

[cbn]

I've had electrolytic capacitors fail before I've had HDDs fail. In fact, I plan to make a thread about the awesome quality of ECS's electrolytic capacitors in a motherboard that I THOUGHT would have steer clear of those doomed capacitors.

How old was this ECS motherboard?

 

[tortillasoup]

How old was this ECS motherboard?

I think I bought it in early 2006. It was an Nforce3-a motherboard. I bought it as a kit from Frys Electronics with a Sempron 3100+.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/arcmessageview.php?catid=28&threadid=561014

 

[skipsneeky2]

How old was this ECS motherboard?

The memories of buying a cheap Frys E6750+ECS combo then later on a Q6600 combo.The prices half the time ended up being cheaper then what the damn cpu went for.

El cheapo friends of mine would flock sometimes 3 to the backseat and we run off to Frys to get a combo deal,then you had Burger King right across the street.:wub: Those damn rodeo burgers.

The memories so niceOutside of one of the ECS boards popping all the usb and ps/2 ports when i decided to take a Q6600 to 3GHz on pretty much stock voltage.

 

[Makaveli]

Stop. Just stop. Go back the garage and telling everybody they should be driving a Prius.

Going to have to agree on this will need more than some short PCworld article.

Seems like the rest of community has chimed in and I pretty much agree with everyone else that has posted since.

I don't know how often you guys change your HDDs but I wouldn't trust an SSD to last 10+ years, at least not yet. I still have HDDs from the early 90s - 2000s in use. The SSD seem like they're great when they're new but if they get old, they just won't last. It's true they'll handle physical shock better but if I want to have an older system just sit on the shelf and then boot it up some time later, there is a risk the data won't be there. I've had electrolytic capacitors fail before I've had HDDs fail. In fact, I plan to make a thread about the awesome quality of ECS's electrolytic capacitors in a motherboard that I THOUGHT would have steer clear of those doomed capacitors.

My Raid 0 array which consist of two 160GB intel G2's one of those SSD's has been in service since Dec 24, 2009 so that would make it 7 years old!!!!

I don't see myself having an issue with it lasting another 3 years it will probably not be in my main rig but will still be in service.

Drive health is still 100%

Host writes at 7 TB's

I'm not really concerned about my drive dying anytime soon in the next 3 years or longer.

 

[tortillasoup]

Going to have to agree on this will need more than some short PCworld article.

Seems like the rest of community has chimed in and I pretty much agree with everyone else that has posted since.



My Raid 0 array which consist of two 160GB intel G2's one of those SSD's has been in service since Dec 24, 2009 so that would make it 7 years old!!!!

I don't see myself having an issue with it lasting another 3 years it will probably not be in my main rig but will still be in service.

Drive health is still 100%

Host writes at 7 TB's

I'm not really concerned about my drive dying anytime soon in the next 3 years or longer.

A drive failing and having proper data retention don't always overlap. The drive could be functional but have retained no data or it has morphed into garbage. You write over that data and all is well, but you can't ignore the fact that the data did become garbage. It's nice that you people have had a great experience with SSDs but there are people who haven't been so fortunate and operated their SSDs out of the normal temperature parameters and or they weren't used frequently enough and consequently lost data or the entire drive itself. The same could be said for a mechanical drive but I know that a mechanical drive should be able to be parked and not used for some time, up to at least 50c before you'd have to worry about flipped bits and whatnot.


I'm not saying one cannot buy an SSD, in fact I've already purchased one for another person's computer. But I know this system will be lightly used and the most critical data will be stored externally on a mechanical drive due to the abundance of space. I also find it disturbing that you cannot effectively wipe an SSD entirely of its previous data as it's apparently more easily recoverable than it should be.

 

[tortillasoup]

You do have a valid point regarding cold storage and flash memory. Unless it is very new, I wouldn't trust an *unpowered* SSD to store data for more than a few years. But powered? In a system? Should be fine. Likewise, running an MLC drive with paging. Should last way past when it might be considered "obsolete".

I've read somewhere that if a piece of data hasn't been "read" on an SSD in some time, even if the drive is powered, the data can disappear/get corrupted due to "not being powered". Not sure how true that is but it doesn't seem impossible.

 

[KingFatty]

I've read somewhere that if a piece of data hasn't been "read" on an SSD in some time, even if the drive is powered, the data can disappear/get corrupted due to "not being powered". Not sure how true that is but it doesn't seem impossible.

I'm sure you have good sources of data as the basis for your beliefs, but just casually reading your responses does seem to give off the vibe of a sort of unjustified paranoia against SSDs, like a "get off my lawn" type of mentality instead of a good reasoned argument weighing the pros and cons. But I can't help thinking your views are somewhat dated and based on Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) of the past, instead of modern analysis and improved hardware.

It's just surprising to hear that someone would avoid SSDs entirely and use a system based exclusively on hard drives.

Maybe you can explain why you are against a combo approach where you have an SSD for bootup and programs, and all your important data on a hard drive? That's what I do, all my music/photos/videos are on a spinning hard drive, but everything else is on the bootup SSD.

More importantly, I don't really give a crap if my SSD has a problem, so there is really no risk. Couldn't you just add an SSD and only install windows, and keep your existing hard drive alongside it?

 

[monkeydelmagico]

I've read somewhere that if a piece of data hasn't been "read" on an SSD in some time, even if the drive is powered, the data can disappear/get corrupted due to "not being powered". Not sure how true that is but it doesn't seem impossible.

It is impossible besides hard drives can get ANTS
so SSD is better.

On Topic: 16gb ram is a bit overkill and more for the power user currently.

 

[Makaveli]

snip

His post does give off the tin foil vibe but I decided not to address that but it would certainly be helpful to better understand his position if he posted some more facts.

As for memory I think 8GB today is a good min 16GB average and 32GB would be overkill for an average enthusiast build all depends on what you actually do on the machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I just upgraded a friend's AM2+ rig to 4x4GB DDR2-800 (cheap Hynix high-density RAM). He already has a quad-core. Maybe I'll surprise him for his birthday, and give him a Thuban to drop in, if he's still using his same rig in a few months (likely).

He didn't really need all 16GB, but he had been using 4GB, and bumping up against the limits occasionally, after a long uptime.

I've memory leaks on my rig, seems to be due to my 8812AU USB wifi dongle drivers. Total PITA.

 

[blankslate]

It's just surprising to hear that someone would avoid SSDs entirely and use a system based exclusively on hard drives.

Maybe you can explain why you are against a combo approach where you have an SSD for bootup and programs, and all your important data on a hard drive? That's what I do, all my music/photos/videos are on a spinning hard drive, but everything else is on the bootup SSD.

I don't think there is a real explanation for this. Drives fail (whether they are SSDs or HDDs) and given that you should have backups locally (via external drive) and offsite. Technology changes and there is no reason, imo, not to leverage the advantages of an SSD and an HDD in a system.

Back on topic if you game with recent games probably 16 GB. Unless you're playing MMO's exclusively then you can probably get by with 8 GB.

If you don't game then 8 GB unless you're using something like Photoshop regularly or just expect to keep the system for quite awhile.


________________

 

[2is]

I've read somewhere that if a piece of data hasn't been "read" on an SSD in some time, even if the drive is powered, the data can disappear/get corrupted due to "not being powered". Not sure how true that is but it doesn't seem impossible.

Sounds like you're just indulging in doom gloom scenarios to convince yourself the dated technology of HDD is superior. In addition to the examples I've already provided, I also have a late 2010 MacBook Air with an SSD. I've installed every single OS X upgrade that's come down the pipe, including every beta build on this thing. In addition, I've had a bootcamp partition running Windows 7. I then formatted the entire drive and when with a Windows 8 VM using parallels which I eventually upgraded to windows 10.

That's just the writes I've done to it for OS installs alone, not to mention, this thing only ha a 128GB drive and 4GB of ram, which means it's been written to A LOT and large amounts of data have been paged to and from the SSD with only 4GB of ram and running a VM. Yet it's still going.

The case for SSD's is a strong one. The case you're making against them, not so much.

 

[tweakboy]

You wont feel it.

 

[tortillasoup]

Maybe you can explain why you are against a combo approach where you have an SSD for bootup and programs, and all your important data on a hard drive? That's what I do, all my music/photos/videos are on a spinning hard drive, but everything else is on the bootup SSD.

That setup can and does work for me. In fact, that's what I plan to do for another system build. But on an older or cheaper laptop where the choice is either SSD or HDD, I'm going with HDD. I'm speaking from the perspective of a laptop, not a desktop. Yes there are laptops with Msata ports but a lot that don't have one. With a 1TB HDD, backing up the SSD to the HDD should be no problem.

 

[Makaveli]

That setup can and does work for me. In fact, that's what I plan to do for another system build. But on an older or cheaper laptop where the choice is either SSD or HDD, I'm going with HDD. I'm speaking from the perspective of a laptop, not a desktop. Yes there are laptops with Msata ports but a lot that don't have one. With a 1TB HDD, backing up the SSD to the HDD should be no problem.

The reasons for having an SSD is an laptop are even stronger than a desktop when laptops get tossed around in bags or are dropped by accident while still running. The SSD will also provide longer battery life since it uses less power than an HD and will produce less heat which means less noise also from the cooling fans on the laptop.

 

[nerp]

SSDs are superior in every category. Any argument otherwise is just misinformed. They are rapidly becoming the medium of choice for mega datacenters for cost and reliability reasons. The only thing holding back SSD implementation is cost.

 

[Magic Carpet]

SSDs are superior in every category. Any argument otherwise is just misinformed. They are rapidly becoming the medium of choice for mega datacenters for cost and reliability reasons. The only thing holding back SSD implementation is cost.

Even for my personal purposes, I haven't bought a mechanical drive in 5 years now. Been buying SSDs (Intel and Toshiba) ever since, not a single one has failed me yet. Luckily, I never needed heaps of storage space to begin with, unlike some of you guys...

Absolutely hated the heat/noise/size of the older HDDs. Was the first adopter of the RAM disks when they first emerged too. Gigabyte i-RAM disk, anyone remember that? Windows XP boot to desktop in 7 seconds, now that was fast back in circa ~2006.

 

[tortillasoup]

One reason I don't like SSDs and this is a bit ridiculous but bare with me... it gives developers an excuse to make bloated programs, much like improved CPUs and more available RAM. I don't know about you, but I don't think a basic calculator "app" should take up 100MB of ram. Windows 7 takes a long time to boot up on a conventional HDD yet feature wise, I just don't see it justify its resource consumption over Windows XP. I only use Windows 7 because XP hasn't been given the support that it deserves.

 

[XavierMace]

One reason I don't like SSDs and this is a bit ridiculous but bare with me... it gives developers an excuse to make bloated programs, much like improved CPUs and more available RAM. I don't know about you, but I don't think a basic calculator "app" should take up 100MB of ram. Windows 7 takes a long time to boot up on a conventional HDD yet feature wise, I just don't see it justify its resource consumption over Windows XP. I only use Windows 7 because XP hasn't been given the support that it deserves.

I bore with you. It didn't get any less ridiculous.

 

[2is]

I bore with you. It didn't get any less ridiculous.

The ridiculousness actually increased by 3 fold... I blame my SSD for it though.

 

[aigomorla]

The ridiculousness actually increased by 3 fold... I blame my SSD for it though.

future mp3's will be 15-45mbs?

 

[tortillasoup]

future mp3's will be 15-45mbs?

If you go full bitrate MP3 they do get pretty large but by and large, files that are compressed and created with mathematical compression are getting smaller thanks to more powerful processors and better algorithms. Audio/Video has become more efficient and with those efficiency increases we're getting better quality, higher resolution video which is perfectly fine with me even if there is a performance penalty. But things that are affected by the human element where people aren't being rewarded for more efficient coding like programming software, it's getting worse. Windows 10 is suppose to be more efficient than 7 or 8 but there are reasons why many of us don't want to switch over to that platform.

 

[beginner99]

Sadly not true anymore, especially if you use chrome. My 8GB tablet is floating around 4.1-4.7GB used with <20 tabs open in chrome along with a few tabs in firefox, and a few apps like pdf reader. Out of curiosity I opened task manager, the chrome tabs take anywhere from 26MB to 185MB each. It adds up fast...

Agree that chrome is a memory hog. Still at work we can only use a PC/laptop provided by IT and you can only get 32-bit windows 7. So you are limited to 4 GB of RAM of which only about 3.2 are actually usable. I have to work with this.

Since we use google business I have to have chrome open most of the time. Right now I have Chrome open with 4 tabs and firefox with 12 tabs. No issues. If I close chrome I can also run some data analysis with 100K complex records using a java application (eg memory heavy). Yeah it sucks, would be faster with more RAM and would not need to manage apps manually (close them). I also think it's ridiculous for a company in 2016 to offer such crappy computers (laptops are limited to ultra books with 15w processors). You're f***** if you need processing power.

Still my point is: I can do a lot even today with just 3.2 GB usable RAM. For me the average user is family members which don't even save tabs for reload and seeing 2 open tabs is already a miracle. 4 GB is enough for them.

8 GB is enough especially with an 120 gb SSD and if you use hibernation 16 gb will use up a lot of that precious disk space.

 

[Fayd]

i recently ran into a very real performance constraint using 16 GB.

R couldn't hold all the data i needed to process in memory at once.

i had to revert to pulling chunks of it at a time.

 

[coercitiv]

But things that are affected by the human element where people aren't being rewarded for more efficient coding like programming software, it's getting worse. Windows 10 is suppose to be more efficient than 7 or 8 but there are reasons why many of us don't want to switch over to that platform.

And how many of those reasons have anything to do with efficiency?
One can have many reasons to dislike the new Windows, but it's still the most efficient Windows to date.

Windows 7 takes a long time to boot up on a conventional HDD yet feature wise, I just don't see it justify its resource consumption over Windows XP.

What resource consumption? Let me guess... RAM caching, one of the most important best practices in efficient computing.

Sounds to me you're very comfortable using "efficient" slow hardware and slow software, while many other users enjoy "inefficient" new components and new software that end up drawing circles around old configurations, often for a fraction of the energy cost. It's called blissful ignorance until you start preaching it on forums, after that it's just plain old denial.