Best boards with 8 Ram slots

[Nikolai]

Hey guys can you recommend any motherboards that have over 4 slots for Ram sticks, and could potentially go up to 16gb of RAM. Are these motherboards quite expensive? Are there some good affordable ones?

Can a 64-bit OS like vista handle this much Ram ?

Im just keeping upgradability in mind while i build a PC to keep upgrading over the next few years before harddrives become solid state.

[Yellowhello]

Those are usually server motherboards. I doubt you'd need that much RAM. I would say you get a good regular ATX board.

[Mithosphere]

what exactly are you primarily going to be using this computer for? I have to agree with yellowhello, unless you are serious about using a server you'd be much better off with an ATX board

[Nikolai]

Im mainly going to be using the computer for photoshop work ... and some files can get up to and over 1 gig in file size, but more generally file sizes are around 300-500 megabytes .... so i guess if you can give me a suggestion on suitable motherboard for this type of work that would be awesome. also something that i can expand with in the future and ad upgrades to is something that iwll be more economic then buying anew computer im thinking

[Quakindude]

64-bit OS'es, which can be a real PITA driver wise, are required to run more than 4Gb of ram. Heck, even 4Gb of ram isn't fully utilized by a 32-bit OS and a good chunk of it remains idle and useless.

So here's my suggestion. Get you a very good 80Gb, 7200RPM HDD. Or a Raptor drive if that's in your budget. Then, format that drive and either use it only as the scratch disk for Photoshop or, partition this new drive into two 40Gb drives and use one for your Debbie Does Dallas collection and the other for your scratch disk.

Here's a decent link to get you started on Photoshop scratch disks. You can Google for more info about this as there's tons of it out there. I haven't run one since a 6Gb drive was my scratch disk, so I'm sure the formatting and options for it have changed.

Even today, I would imagine that a dedicated scratch disk set up for Photoshop will be financially more acceptable and easier to get going on.

[Stormcrow]

First, you need to decide on what platform your basing it off of. I'm sure everyone around here will say go Core2Duo, or a LGA775 board. Really, 8 RAM slots is not needed for anything but a server. Modern higher end ATX boards have 4 DIMM slots that can handle 2GB sticks, or 8GB all together. Most of us have 2 1GB sticks, and find that to be excess.
So if your looking to run multiple photoshop apps and have several large documents open, I would say go with a Q6600, a stable, reputable board like the Gigabyte P35-DS3R or similar, and 4 gigs of DDR2-800 memory and your flavor of 64-bit OS. If you really want to go the extra mile with memory, you can get two 4GB RAM kits and have 8 gigs total, but I think you'd be pleased with the performance from 4GB.

EDIT: QuakinDude's Scratch Disk idea sounds pretty awesome, gotta check that out myself.

[[Dr. V]]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

First, you need to decide on what platform your basing it off of. I'm sure everyone around here will say go Core2Duo, or a LGA775 board. Really, 8 RAM slots is not needed for anything but a server. Modern higher end ATX boards have 4 DIMM slots that can handle 2GB sticks, or 8GB all together. Most of us have 2 1GB sticks, and find that to be excess.
So if your looking to run multiple photoshop apps and have several large documents open, I would say go with a Q6600, a stable, reputable board like the Gigabyte P35-DS3R or similar, and 4 gigs of DDR2-800 memory and your flavor of 64-bit OS. If you really want to go the extra mile with memory, you can get two 4GB RAM kits and have 8 gigs total, but I think you'd be pleased with the performance from 4GB.

EDIT: QuakinDude's Scratch Disk idea sounds pretty awesome, gotta check that out myself.

Definitely +1!