With the release of Intel’s LGA-1151 socket and Z170 chipset what X99 and 2011 users already knew finally became ‘mainstream knowledge’. That is to say consumers finally realized that DDR4 was indeed the future and that DDR3 is history.
The reasons for the change over from DDR3 to DDR4 do vary, but the end result is the same and with this sea change comes a whole host of RAM models meant to compete for your hard earned dollar. Over the past few months we have seen many, many reviews on DDR4 RAM that go over what they bring the table on the synthetic side of the coin but have seen few that show what DDR4 can offer gaming consumers in real world scenarios. Equally important we have seen almost zero reviews on what amount of ram truly is optimal.
This last scenario is a great oversight as at the end of the day RAM is just another tool, and picking the right size tool can be the difference between a good system and a great one. As knowledgeable system builders we are asked all the time exactly how much RAM someone should buy for their system…and usually our answer is ‘more the better’. In this review we are going to take a closer look at a specific kit of DDR4 that we have recommended since their inception and go over the reasons for why PC gaming enthusiasts really should be buying more RAM than they have been led to believe.
Precisely we are going to not only show what the Crucial Ballistix Elite 32GB DDR4-2666 kit brings to the table, and what they are capable of, but why spending more for 32GB of RAM instead of cheeping out for 16GB not only makes sense, but really should be the de-facto standard. To do this we are not going to rely upon very many synthetic test results (instead these will be used to show what overclocking abilities these ram sticks have), and instead will also show real world scenarios and what 32GB of RAM brings to the table.