About to build a new DAW and am wondering if I am even able to use 64 gigs of RAM or if I will run out of CPU power first (running Kontakt 5, Omnisphere, etc.) before I am able to utilize all the RAM.
I’d maybe consider running a RAM disk if I had that much RAM. you could have a 20-30 gig ram disk and load your current working project into it for super fast response and still have 30 gig’s left for samplers/romplers.
To be honest with disk streaming now I’m not sure you’d ever need that much ram, I’ve tried loading all my EW QLSO with all articulations of every instrument in every section and only got to about 8 gigs of loaded ram,throw in a large piano lib and a large drum kit, couple of Stylus rmx and Onmisphere, trillion I bet you’re only at about 16 gigs max.
MC
Wouldn’t any half-way sensible operating system, seeing all that memory, use it for cache anyway? We don’t hear much of ramdisks these days. That’s probably why!
Pro tools 10 has made a big deal though of their RAM caching, it would be nice if cubase had the option to do this as well, it obviously doesn’t load the whole project into ram like pro tools 10.
I don’t know how they’ve achieved this as pro tools 10 is still a 32 bit app, or maybe I’ve misunderstood 
MC
How much CPU are you using at this point?
not that much if I remember correctly. The new batch of plugs by Steven Slate like the VCC and VTM and 2C audio’s Aether and B2 reverbs are hitting my machine hard now when mixing. Oh and Nebula of course which not only hit’s your CPu hard it also loves RAM.
I don’t think sample streaming is that CPU intensive.
MC
Maybe so. But the difference in price is only $150 so I might go with the 64 gigs instead. Thanks for the info.
It may not specifically pre-load. But you might find the operating system is pretty good at caching once-used data until the RAM is required for something else. Which, with ample RAM, might mean never.
I don’t know how much you’d like complete pre-loading. For instance, the sample player bundled with Sibelius 7 attempts to pre-load all required samples. This can mean, literally, a 5-minute wait before starting playback of a large score. Even with the samples on a SSD it can take a minute or two.
64GB of RAM is overkill anyway you slice it. Unnecessary, but won’t hurt if you have money to burn.
The only scenario for anything over 16GB is if you are doing absolutely massive orchestral mockups and have the libraries for layering that kind of thing. Not probable.
I’m not sure I agree. Was it Bill Gates that said we’d never need more than 128k of RAM? Now look at us. I think, when I get the 64 gigs, I’ll think of a way to use it. My template can expand by leaps and bounds for instance. Anyway, 32 gigs is $150 and 64 is only $300. I’m by no means “rich” or even “well off” but to me, the difference is not very much.
absolutely, the cost is irrelevant. The one thing I would say is that if you’re thinking of overclocking then having all your ram slots full , regardless of the actual amount , will mean you’re less likely to achieve a good overclock due to memory timing/synchronisation.
If I take half my memory sticks (3 from 6) from my machine I can overclock to 4 ghz no problem, filling the slots fully with the full 24 means I can’t overclock much at all.
just something to think about.
MC
That is good to know indeed. I’ve never overclocked, but I was actually thinking of doing it this time. Will also need to look into liquid cooling. I suppose I could start with 32 gigs, overclock, and see where that gets me. I could always order the other 32 gigs in a couple off months if I find I need them.
If you go for a Noctua or something similar you wont need liquid with the Sandy bridge chips as they’re fairly low voltage to start with so less heat. That’s not saying liquid isn’t good but it’s expensive and fiddly for a good quiet system.
goodd luck 
I’m planning on upgrading to a new 6 core 2011 machine in the next couple of months too with windows 8 possibly .
MC
Haha, I knew the cubase forum was good for something!
Cool. Get your 64GB of RAM. Post back when you can use more than 16 in a realistic scenario.
It’s probably more likely if you have a sampler that doesn’t disk-stream like Halion or Kontakt. For instance, the Spectrasonics and Toontrack stuff doesn’t stream, but I don’t find myself loading more than one drumkit or massively-sampled bass instrument.
I could force my system to get to that 16GB point, but realistically, not even very close. Someday maybe.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting 64GB, unless you like saving money. YMMV.
Well, the projects I work on are so varied, that I would like to have a large template. Believe it or not, I think I cam using close to my 16 gigs now (yes, I have a large orchestral template up with all 4 sections of strings, horns, percs, some woodwinds). Would be nice to be able to have that AND a pop template in one.
But a review on the intel motherboard I want said that it had a problem seeing all 64 gigs of ram (could only see 32) so I wanted to test if this was true or not. If so, I might return the motherboard.
Time to load a 64gb template?
32?
And I mean TOTALLY load…to where it plays back…not the stupid background loading where it gives you control back 1/4 of the way in…but, you can’t really actually play it for another few minutes.
Anything over 8 would be absurd without said libraries living on SSD, IME. Unless its a slave machine where you just hit load template ONCE a day…change projects on the main machine.
Buy whatever you want, but for perspective, a slave machine can load every VSL articulation of ever single instrument in the entire orchestra in 31gb. You have that $15k collection? No?
16 would be so comfortable for so long that I have trouble seeing anymore need. I say that having never neared maxing out my 8gb box…but, if you were to go overkill"best" on everything…VSL’s absurdly huge piano…even with BFD2’s hugest kits…and a section of VSL strings…or LASS…anyway, you NEED to spend the money on putting all those samples on SSD, which will speed your work time and ability more than some absurdly unusable 64gb of ram.
Using around 53-56GB here for an orchestral template. My slave machine isn’t always available, so I host it all in VEP locally in case there is crashing or I need to change sessions. I would use all 64 and load up more useful stuff at once, but it’s not smart to cap or exceed RAM in Windows.
The template takes around ~33min to load everything and I don’t use any SSDs yet.
The amount of RAM you’ll need depends on the needs of the sample libraries and how much of them you plan to use at any given time. If you don’t know your requirements or even a ballpark estimate, just get the most you can afford.
That’s exactly what I thought. I’m about to upgrade the studio PC with SSD as C:, and thought I might as well up my RAM count while starting from scratch again. It’s now 3x2GB, so I figured why add only 3x4 when 3x8 is only 30 euros more… So, looking at 30 GB - now to plan a date to actually make the change.