More RAM or new CPU

[johngc]

I am at a bit of a cross roads and would appreciate some advice. 
 

I currently run unraid on an i7 3770 Cpu and 16gb RAM. 
 

I have one OS X VM and a few dockers of which Plex is the heaviest used.

 

I have found my memory is close to saturation point now (8gb allocated to the VM) so would like to add some more. 
 

However my mb only supports 16gb and i think the 3770 is possibly up there at the top of the compatibility list for the mb.

 

So it is time to upgrade, but I am torn between finding a board that takes 32gb RAM and keeping everything else the same or taking the plunge on a cpu with more cores which will also mean a new board and some more RAM. 
 

I am not sure how beneficial the extra cores will be. I probably have at most three concurrent streams with plex and have seen it max out and hang but I think that is more down to the lack of RAM causing data to be written to disk. 
 

Of course If I do upgrade everything.... I then have to decide Intel v AMD!

[testdasi]

Perhaps try reducing your VM RAM to 6GB (usually 6-8 range doesn't make that much of a diff to regular uses) and that would free up a 2GB for your other uses.

 

Of course it's always fun to upgrade but then you probably don't need it if the RAM shortage isn't too severe.

[johngc]

I'd not thought about going to 6Gb. For some reason my mind works 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 for RAM!

 

Thanks - I will give it a go.

 

Mind you, I am not kidding myself and realise that there will be an update in the not too distant future...