32GB of RAM, Whats best way to optimize it for Linux.

[Bandit]

OK Everyone,
I have decided on purchasing 32GB of DDR3-1600 for my new system. Its going to be Corsair Vengeance 1.35v DRAM. Its going pretty cheap right now for around 100-120 bucks here in the US with tax and all. So I want to take advantage of the low pricing and since the new mobo has Quad Channel support. I wanted to find the best way to make the most use of the RAM. This is something I never tried before since I never had ram to spare.

Ideas? Suggestions?

Thanks,
Joe

EDIT:
Decided to go with just 16GB for my box, but still would love to here any optimization solutions that you do..
Cheers..

[Lightstar]

Hard question since I never use more than 70% of my 4gb.

I guess if you aren't the type to read error logs, you could always put those in the ram along with internet temporary files, etc. It can clear out after every reboot, keeps the HDD a bit cleaner. It's more useful for those who use SSD hard drives though since it will cut down a lot on the read / write to the hard drive.

I heard you can mount the ram memory as ramdisk to use as storage or to keep applications in the RAM so that it loads really quickly. I would do that for programs you use very often, firefox, nautilus, whatever.

[Bandit]

Hard question since I never use more than 70% of my 4gb............

LOL same here.. I was thinking about allocating 16GB as a RAMDisk, but wonder how much more of a performance boost would this be over a average SATA 6GB/s SSD?

[3rdalbum]

It's not a bargain if it is useless to you. I couldn't even fill 4GiB on my Ubuntu system, so 32GiB will be sitting dormant for you.

Don't waste your money. Buy less RAM. 4GiB is plenty for most people today and gives extra head room for the future.

[Bandit]

It's not a bargain if it is useless to you. I couldn't even fill 4GiB on my Ubuntu system, so 32GiB will be sitting dormant for you.

Don't waste your money. Buy less RAM. 4GiB is plenty for most people today and gives extra head room for the future.

Yea thats the question I am facing. On one side I see a bargin and get that voice in the back of my head saying "youll be awesome with that" then I get another voice of reason saying "you dont use the 4gigs you use now!!"... I need help

If I can justify the need in boosting performance. I will do it. Otherwise I am thinking of just getting 16GB even that is still overkill.

[drawkcab]

run 10+ virtual operating systems?

[CharlesA]

run 10+ virtual operating systems?

That's the only thing I can think of.

[d3v1150m471c]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physica...xtension#Linux

[Bandit]

run 10+ virtual operating systems?

Well I can only hope with that much ram freaking Netflix video will quit suffering from decode lag.

[SeijiSensei]

More memory is good, but it won't speed up your processor. If you have a slow CPU and want to improve Netflix performance, you might find spending $50-100 on a modern NVIDIA or ATI card with support for on-board graphics decoding a better use of funds.

More RAM will buy you a bigger disk cache and might speed things up some. The only way to tell is to monitor the system's performance, even with something as simple as top. How much memory is devoted to caching? What happens if you load a bunch of applications? Do some of them get swapped out? If you can open all of the applications you normally use and don't experience substantial delays switching among them, more memory probably won't make a big difference.

Do you run virtual machines using something like VirtualBox? With 8 GB you could create a 4 GB Windows VM and still have 4 GB left over for Ubuntu. If this were a server on which you wanted to run a number of virtual servers, then you might want 32 GB. On a desktop machine, I'd say more than 16 GB is overkill, and 8 GB is probably plenty.