RAM: 8GB or 16GB

Drop it down to 4GB's and pocket some change.

If just BD playback and/or watch LiveTV, 8GB is fine. 

I hit past 4gb quite often...so going from 8 DOWN to 4gb doesn't really make much sense. Especially considering he already OWNS the 8gb...why would he downgrade?

Because 8gb is unnecessary and vastly underutilized in a:

If you're following what was included in the post and you "hit past 4gb" might I ask what software you are using for recording with some Blu-Ray playback?

You may need 8GB if you have (or are planning to have) WMC extenders.

16GB is completely unnecessary.

I run 8gb now and in my new build am moving to 32gb. cost is petty compared to the $500 I spent on the 8gb years ago. so whatever 200 bucks for 32gb hell yeah.

but thats my gaming rig not my htpc... what applications are you using? just hit ctr alt del when you are "maxing out" your utilization ie a lot of programs running to see what ballpark you are in. I frequently nearly max out my gaming rig. I do heavy multi tasking. but my htpc uses lttle to none since I run media browser only basically.

Sounds like he already has 8 so most of this thread is pretty moot....however starting from scratch...while 4gb will get most people by, 8gb is usually literally only a few dollars more then 4 these days, so that being the case, I think its def worth that chump change for the overhead even if it does go largely underutilized.

This!!!!

overkill is good.

4GB is not enough when you factor in the new OS that might come out... the life of the PC, and the very low cost of 8GB. It just makes sense to use 8GB.

I am not saying I disagree with this necessarily however be careful as this line of thinking is a slippery slope.

I need a G620, however I want a i3 2100 and its only $50 more.

I need a dvd drive however a bluray drive is on sale for only $30 more.

I could use a H67 however a Z68 is only $30 more.

I need a 400 watt PSU however the modular is only $30 more.

Etc, etc, etc.

The "low cost" of the upgrades quickly add up.

Your 100% right...

yet.. I don't own a PC with only 4GB of Ram.

Even my G530 server, and my G630 HTPC have 8GB in them. As does a couple G620 office PC's.

I only have 4GB in my oldest PC (E8500 core2 duo) and this is because it's DDR2 and old.

My main PC has 16GB. Probably overkill yes.

But... you can get 8GB for such a low cost that I think it makes sense.

I have a $300 HTPC with both a 120GB Sata3 SSD and 8GB DDR2 1600mhz. You can certainly have low cost and still have 8GB of DDR3. It's pennies compared to a total system cost.

I can save the difference of 8GB cost on just about any other PC component just catching them on sale.

There is better places to save a buck IMO. $10 more is worth it for double the ram if nothing more than piece of mind.

That said- of coarse 4GB would work just fine.

Those are already pretty big jumps. Going from 4GB to 8GB is usually just $10-15 extra ($25-30 vs $40). This is like the 2GB vs 4GB debate of old. Sure, 2GB is enough but for the minimal price difference, it's better to go with more.

Its the same principle. That was the point.

4GB is just fine. However, I agree that for $10 more doubling anything (RAM, CPU power, SSD size, etc) on your HTPC is worth the cost. However, when you say that's its 50% more then it doesn't sound worth it.

Its all perspective. But the principle is the same.

Huh, my zacate system chugs along just fine on 2gigs

I prefer to deal with absolutes rather than percentages. There's a big difference between 50% of $10 and 50% of $1000. Besides, I generally tend to look at things from an overall budget.


Nobody is saying 2GB isn't enough. Given how inexpensive RAM is nowadays, though, 8GB is like the new 4GB. Besides, it's not really the lack of RAM that's an issue with Zacate. It's the really anemic CPU. There's practically no headroom with either Atom or Zacate.

Yes, but its working for my use, its a NAS/secondary HTPC.

I don't see many examples of it only being $10-15 extra, and I just purchased 8GB recently. Since that was over a month ago, I went back to newegg and looked around. Corsair vengeance has been popular recently, so here is 1x4GB DDR3 1600 for $25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145346
Here is 2x4GB DDR3 1600 for $49 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144

The cheapest 8 GB that I see of DDR3 1600 is $41, and the cheapest I see of 4GB DDR3 1600 is $21.50

If the logic is getting 8GB DDR3 1066 for $35 vs 4GB DDR3 1600 for $22, then I would go with 1600 for Ivy Bridge down the line. Since it happened to come with combo savings, I got 2x4GB DDR3 1600 and used each stick in different builds. If I need to add more later, then ram should be cheaper and I could consolidate the 2 sticks back to one build. If I wanted to use 1600 instead of 1066 later, then it would cost more out of pocket and I would get no benefit from the miniscule $1-$4 savings originally

It's about 15$ difference in price.

Can you read? It's double the price

16 gigs for the price might make sense for a desktop but we are just talking HTPC here.

I use multiple extenders and since the media center also hosts all of our pictures and music, there's usually one or more devices actively pulling files and such from the PC at any time. I went with 8GB and while I don't hit 8GB total usage, I have seen 5GB on occassion. If anything I've learned about Windows is that it loves to have room to breath. Operating Windows at anywhere near 80% capacity on RAM, disk or CPU might work but it is far from optimal.

That said, 8GB if you got it. 4GB if you don't plan to use extenders. It is recommended 2GB for the PC and 1GB/extender if I am not mistaken.

As far as I know ram over 4gbs doesnt even help in most games and benchmarks suggest too much memory hurts performance, so Im not sure what 16gbs would be helpful for except in specialized tools. There is such a thing as too much memory, I think 8 is pushing it and I would not go up to 16 just because it might have adverse affects on things like games.

If it's just a HT computer, 4gb should be plenty. I put in 8gb, as I use some for video (i3) and I'll regularly do work on my display while my daughter watches a show on our projector. I can easily open 15+ windows while doing work. Also, the cost difference between 4gb and 8gb isn't much. Throw in transcoding while doing work and watching a video/bluray, and 8gb can help.

I'm trying not to completely threadjack, but why are there always multiple suggestions around HTPC usage?

Here's some other suggestions following that same logic:

If it's a workstation -> Go with 16
If it's a tablet -> try to go with one large, low V chip and make sure you solder it on the logic board
If it's a supercomputer -> better make it between 1 and 1.5 Petabytes

Good grief, what forum are we in?

Why not lean towards the obvious usage

I want to see some screenshots of some of these usage figures along with what people are running during "average" use. My dedicated ESXi server has 4 VM's running with fairly decent usage at times and only 16GB of memory in it... I've never experienced any issues related to memory itself. There's no way these multitasking "gaming" HTPC's need that much memory... perhaps it's inefficient computing but in my mind that would need to be severely inefficient lol. I'm just confused....

Windows will use up as much ram as it can, it makes sense to. Just because you use up 4GB of ram, does not mean you "NEED" 4GB of ram. It simply means that windows has found some stuff to cache in RAM. We don't buy RAM to look at how much of it is not utilised. The more they cache, the snappier the system might feel when software gets pre-loaded into RAM.

As for how much RAM, if you can afford, then why not. But 4GB should work just fine for most users - even for 4K content I'd imagine.

In my mind right now, the cost differential between 4 and 8GB may be small, but it may well be the cost differential between one brand of SSD and another where one is known to be more reliable. The cost differential might also be the difference between two coolers, one that is virtually silent, and one that has a noticeable buzz/whine etc. The cost differential might be the difference between two PSUs, in short, I guess I'm just saying that there are far more things I'd consider spending the small differential on before worrying about whether to buy the additional RAM.

He did say the extra 8 GB is free from a coworker. I say take it.