RAM Upgrade Guide

Hey everyone! I'm looking for some advice on upgrading my RAM to 16GB—I've been feeling a bit of a bottleneck lately. Here is what my current setup looks like:

PS: Corsair CX Series, 500 Watt

Motherboard: MSI MAG B550

Processor: AMD X8 FX-8320 3500 MHz

Cooler: LC POWER LC-CC-120

RAM: Kingston DDR3 HyperX B, 1600MHz, CL9, 4GB x2

Graphics: EVGA GeForce RTX Series 4G OC, 4GB GDDR5

The motherboard supports up to 4 slots at 2133 MHz...

ruggeddriver5 said:Any recommendations for bumping my RAM up to 16 GB?

So, you're sitting on 8 GB of DDR3 right now. Why the sudden urge to upgrade? Where exactly are you hitting a wall with your memory usage?

Honestly, this build looks incredibly well-balanced to me. Unless you're planning on editing heavy 8K video files, I don't see where you're lacking anything... but hey, that's just my take. I’m actually sitting here wondering what part you feel is missing. 😁

stormyviper2 said:Honestly, that setup looks incredibly well-balanced—unless you're planning on editing 8K footage, in which case you might want a bit more muscle... but even then, it looks solid to me. I’m actually wondering where you feel it's lacking. 😁

Haha, you guys might actually have a point there! I happen to have a little extra breathing room in my budget right now, and since those components are pretty much the oldest parts in my rig (aside from the motherboard), I was thinking—if there's any way to squeeze out some better performance, maybe I should just sell what I have and pick up two faster SSDs or something similar. 😵

If you aren't pushing your system through some extreme, heavy-duty tasks, honestly, 8 GB is perfectly fine. 😉

stormyviper2 said:Honestly, if you aren't doing anything super intense, 8 GB should be perfectly fine. 😉

Haha—well, my idea of "extreme" is definitely a Football Manager save that stretches out over 35 seasons! 😁

Look, you’re doing fine. 😉 If you ask me, that processor is definitely the biggest bottleneck in this build. But honestly, the rest of the setup is solid—it's actually a really decent configuration. You don't really need to mess with anything else right now. 😉

Either save your cash for a full platform upgrade when you actually need one, or just go out and spend it on drinks. Honestly, 8GB is plenty for a setup like that.

Everything mentioned stands as it is—so things will likely stay exactly this way for the foreseeable future 😉

There is a 480GB SSD installed underneath $133 such a great upgrade

I forgot to mention—I'm currently running this SSD:

https://www.newegg.com/p/ssd-256-gb...m_content=pp_1

All things considered, if I'm looking at a serious upgrade, I think I've pretty much hit a dead end with this motherboard. It only really makes sense to jump to a whole new processor once I move past this board...

If you’re looking to actually upgrade your performance, the processor is really the biggest bottleneck here, and honestly, you’ve already hit the ceiling for that specific socket. To see any meaningful improvement, you're going to need to commit to a full overhaul—specifically a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM combo. 😉

As long as your processor isn't bottlenecking you during specific tasks, just stick with what you've got. Something faster and more powerful will always come along eventually anyway.

So, that’s pretty much how I see it playing out 🙂

Since we’re already diving deep into the whole upgrade discussion, I wanted to mention my office desktop—it's an old Dell OptiPlex sitting on my desk right now. Looking at the Intel CPUCPUID results, it’s pretty clear the processor is the main culprit; it’s creating a massive bottleneck and just dragging everything down... the motherboard uses an FM2 socket, though:

Processor: AMD A4-5300B (dual-core)
Memory: 8 GB DDR3, 1600 MHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce

Does anyone have a solid recommendation for a quad-core processor that would fit this setup?

The only decent option might be an A8 5600K or 6600K, though I don't see them being sold much lately. I probably wouldn't pay more than $50 for those.

I saw this on Craigslist

An Intel Core i3 on an FM2 socket (not sure if your board even supports it) for $117. It’s a quad-core running at 3.8GHz... looks like it doesn't even have integrated graphics included... honestly feels a bit overpriced

Someone else is bundling an ASRock FM2A75M-DGS motherboard with a 6600K processor for $117

I’m not quite ready to pull the trigger on swapping out my motherboard just yet—even though I know, looking at the big picture, it would probably be the smarter long-term move. For right now, I really just need the bare minimum to get by. I think I might try my luck on eBay or Amazon to see if I can track down an A8 processor instead ☕

Maybe try looking at something like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-A8-Serie...Google

Eh, that’s almost $100... I guess you’re better off grabbing the same processor bundled with a motherboard for $117 and then just selling the board separately.

He should just leave it alone until the whole thing finally dies out.... Honestly, the system is so outdated and $117 useless. He ought to just let it be until everything completely falls apart.