I'm planning to build a new PC in a couple of months with an Intel i5-11400K and an RTX 5070, which I already purchased for £520 from Amazon. RAM prices are quite high right now, so I'm considering reusing my existing RAM (2x8GB DDR4 2666 MT/s) for the time being, as I'm planning to switch to a DDR5 setup in about 1-2 years, regardless of whether RAM prices stabilize. I have a few questions: 1. Does this seem like a reasonable plan? 2. How much performance could I be sacrificing at 1080p compared to using 32GB of DDR5 at 6000MHz? 3. Any other suggestions or better plans?
3 Answers
I'm in the same boat with 2133MHz RAM. I'm thinking about manual overclocking if I can't reach a point where the CPU is limited.
Yeah, it's tough trying to squeeze performance out of it right now, isn't it?
1) This plan sounds solid. 2) You’re looking at about a 2-7% performance drop, which isn’t very noticeable unless you’re gaming at super high refresh rates, like 300-400Hz. 3) Just use what you've got; it should handle any game pretty well.
Thanks for the insight! I don’t play many esports titles, and my monitor is only 144Hz, so I won’t need those crazy high frame rates.
Have you looked for XMP settings in your BIOS? What speed does your RAM say on the actual stick?
I haven't checked, but I found an old parts list, and it looks like my RAM is running at its advertised speed—maybe I enabled XMP when I built it or forgot.
Sounds like the typical speed without XMP enabled. Does your RAM support XMP?