Comment by mindslight
3 days ago
Hey, at least a fab didn't have to burn down this time. That's progress.
I've maxed out the RAM on every (consumer mobo) build I've ever done, and have always ended up appreciating it. I did a Ryzen build with 192GB back in January, so despite the questionable signal integrity of DDR5 especially on AM5 (more than one DIMM on each channel means lower speed) this time turned out to be no exception. I also stocked up on 130TB of HDD and 30TB of SSD, as it was clear we were headed towards some kind of economic disaster. (look, I'm avoiding politics!)
But the best RAM purchase I ever did was during the dot com crash glut a few decades ago. I maxed out my Athlon XP with 3x 512MB sticks for $27 each. A gig and a half of RAM. Those were the days.
What do you do with 192GB RAM?
My main desktop has 256GB, and my "router" has 128GB. Mostly used for software builds (I use NixOS as a source distribution) and VMs (which themselves are mostly used for web browsing, surprise surprise). The desktop had been fine at 112GB because that was the max that coreboot could train, but the coreboot code has been updated and used DDR3 sticks are cheap. The goals of the new 192GB machine are more of that existing usage, plus LLM experimentation and possible VFX rendering/video work. It's speculative of course, but as I've said I've never regretted bulking up on RAM. If it ends up feeling too vacant and echoey, I can always grab another motherboard and processor and make two 96GB machines.