My PC has 16GB of Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 memory, a Ryzen 5 5600, and a GTX 1050 Ti. I mainly play World of Warcraft while also running a stream, Discord, and around 30 browser tabs. During gaming, memory usage usually sits around 89–94%, and I sometimes experience slowdowns or stuttering. Could the high RAM usage be causing this, and would upgrading to 32GB provide a noticeable improvement without spending too much? If I upgrade, should I buy a 32GB 2x16GB DDR4-3600 kit and replace my current RAM, or can I safely combine it with my existing DDR4-2400 kit? How much would the different speeds matter?
4 Answers
You could reduce memory use by closing some browser tabs or moving the stream to another device, but that’s only useful if you actually want to change your setup. If you want to keep multitasking as you do now, 32GB is a practical and relatively inexpensive quality-of-life upgrade.
Since you’re regularly above 90% memory usage while multitasking, moving to 32GB is reasonable. Sixteen gigabytes is still fine for many games by themselves, but WoW plus a stream, Discord, and dozens of tabs can push you close to the limit. More RAM may reduce slowdowns caused by swapping, although the GTX 1050 Ti could still be the main limit in some situations.
I’d replace the current 2x8GB kit with a matched 2x16GB kit rather than adding two more sticks. Mixing kits isn’t guaranteed to work well, and the faster memory would normally have to run at the slower kit’s speed—probably DDR4-2400. Ryzen processors generally benefit from faster memory, so a matched DDR4-3200 or DDR4-3600 kit would be the cleaner upgrade. You can sell the old RAM to recover some of the cost.
Before buying, check your motherboard’s supported memory speeds and maximum capacity. A 2x16GB DDR4-3600 kit is a sensible target for a Ryzen 5 5600, provided the board supports it. Updating the BIOS may also improve compatibility, but don’t expect RAM alone to fix every lag spike—graphics settings, GPU load, and background applications are worth checking too.
A faster kit can usually be configured to run slower if necessary, but in this case the existing DDR4-2400 kit would hold the whole setup back. Using four sticks can also make memory compatibility and stability more complicated.