"As far as the ram goes, compared to the cost of everything else another 200 bucks to max out the ram is not a big deal. I remember when ram was $1,000 for a 256mb stick...The 12 Gigs of Corsair was only $375.00 total."
My point is: Has anybody here over 4Gb of RAM in his PC and been able to utilize over 4Gb? If you have, with what? Professional audio programs, CAD designing, 3D modelling?
IMO its simply a waste of money to put over 4Gb RAM since probably only professional programs can really use it.
I don't know why since even with 8Gb Windows seems to run the disks quite a bit so despite of ample memory available Windows seems to use only the minimum amount a program needs and keeps the rest in reserve incase some other program would need memory at the same time. It rarely does though if you are playing etc. The same reason why you really don't need four cores in CPU but two is very much enough for anything you might want to do in normal home use.
Also somethin else to consider: you can only utilize Dual Channel-mode with certain memory configurations so I'd advice to select only such RAM configurations that do not disable Dual Channeling. Dual Channeling is usually available only in symmetric memory bank configurations, i.e. two or four more or less identical modules installed in certain memory slots. That is because if you cannot run in Dual Channeling mode your memory bandwidth is practically halved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture-C+
