There is no reason for this to exist except to trick people.
Build PC with 16gb now, upgrade to 32gb in the future, not be stuck with surplus 2x8gb afterwards.
You don't need a placeholder stick to do that.
RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
181–190 of 195 posts
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m also “old” (44) and feel that rainbow LEDs are gaudy. Seems these days that they’re not optional for most things remotely gaming related (e.g. motherboards, graphics cards) , but fortunately can generally be disabled or if illumination is useful (e.g for a keyboard), they can be configured to be white only, which was useful for the Steel Series keyboard I purchased. (I wouldn’t recommend Steel Series keyboards th…
I wanted to go RGB free when I built my desktop, but ran into the exact issue you describe. I kinda just shrugged and accepted it, but maybe I should have looked more deeply into their configurability. Off or all white would be a much better look IMO
I once tore apart my laptop and ripped out all the blue leds and replaced them with green amber reds. If yoi hate it that much you can just mod it. Soldering iron and a magnifier if you're over 30.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#183I miss the days when most people had a vanilla looking computer. You wouldn't have felt out of place at the LAN party lugging in your dad's old Packard Bell tower that you used for your gaming rig. We still appreciated visually stunning PCs. Not just for the works of art that they were, but also for the DIY skill and ethic you were actually required to demonstrate to build and mod them. Nowadays, it's all just "RGB b…
I have absolutely no interest in RGB anything in my computer. Yet I've occasionally ended up with all these RGB parts -- RGB LED on my mouse, RGB RAM sticks, RGB GPU -- just because it's the best alternative right then and there, it's wild. It's at the point where you sometimes have to go with a worse price/performance option or otherwise suboptimal choice just to avoid the stupid useless little RGB LEDs.
That's when black PVC tape is your friend. Just used that earlier today because some cretin decided that putting a 10,000lm blue LED strip on a bedside phone charger is a good idea.
(It's actually a very nice charger, except for that --ing LED strip).
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#184Apropos to nothing, PC Builder Simulator on Steam costs $19.99 USD and it requires a Windows machine with just 4GB RAM and a GPU with 2GB.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#185I miss the days when most people had a vanilla looking computer. You wouldn't have felt out of place at the LAN party lugging in your dad's old Packard Bell tower that you used for your gaming rig. We still appreciated visually stunning PCs. Not just for the works of art that they were, but also for the DIY skill and ethic you were actually required to demonstrate to build and mod them. Nowadays, it's all just "RGB b…
Beige was the only color case available until around 1992. And, sometimes, the floppy drive/s or HDDs didn't match the case at all. Off white cases were one of the first "innovations" before black, gray, and multi color cases arrived in the late 90's where I was. Then tempered glass and ARGB came in like an involuntary disco, a Ford Fiesta with ground effects, or a Trump apartment. All I wished was that Noctua and similar fan mfgrs offered standard monochrome black or white fans rather than brown turds or RGB fluorescent orange.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#186I miss the days when most people had a vanilla looking computer. You wouldn't have felt out of place at the LAN party lugging in your dad's old Packard Bell tower that you used for your gaming rig. We still appreciated visually stunning PCs. Not just for the works of art that they were, but also for the DIY skill and ethic you were actually required to demonstrate to build and mod them. Nowadays, it's all just "RGB b…
I’m also “old” (44) and feel that rainbow LEDs are gaudy. Seems these days that they’re not optional for most things remotely gaming related (e.g. motherboards, graphics cards) , but fortunately can generally be disabled or if illumination is useful (e.g for a keyboard), they can be configured to be white only, which was useful for the Steel Series keyboard I purchased. (I wouldn’t recommend Steel Series keyboards th…
The only reasons I bought a case with a tempered glass side panel were its overall rating and it was extremely cheap. A similar situation happened for the Core V71 case I used for a Supermicro H11DSi dual EPYC virtual server and NAS for my home lab. It's one of a few features I don't care about but are difficult to avoid without incurring limitations like additional cost.
Back in my day™, I remember full super tower cases made from steel when they had 8-10 5.25" HH front bays. They were boat anchors and they were generally terrible at managing heat and airflow.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wanted to go RGB free when I built my desktop, but ran into the exact issue you describe. I kinda just shrugged and accepted it, but maybe I should have looked more deeply into their configurability. Off or all white would be a much better look IMO
What drives me crazy is that recently I had to download three separate bloated Electron app packages just to turn off the RGB in my new mobo, RAM and GPU because in 2025/26 we still don’t have vendors using a common protocol to control RGB.
There's openrgb, authors not all brands/models are supported
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lower density chips are cheaper, because they can be made in previous generation fabs churning out previous generation wafers with previous generation equipment. So there isn't a choice between making a high or low density wafer from the same fab line.
Are there any older generation fabs making DDR5-6400 like the article discusses? As far as I know those ones were mostly upgraded to newer processes and the long lifecycle fabs have targeted slower speeds.
It wouldn't make sense to throw the previous gen machinery to the trash if it can keep making profitable memory. Esp as smaller module capacities become more common now with the price increases. You need to update the chip design for DDR4 -> DDR5 but there's no magic flashy business in DDR5 meaning it could only be implemented in the latest process node.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#189I miss the days when most people had a vanilla looking computer. You wouldn't have felt out of place at the LAN party lugging in your dad's old Packard Bell tower that you used for your gaming rig. We still appreciated visually stunning PCs. Not just for the works of art that they were, but also for the DIY skill and ethic you were actually required to demonstrate to build and mod them. Nowadays, it's all just "RGB b…
I have RGB keyboard, video card, and speakers.
Not by choice, they just came that way and it is unimportant enough that I don't see it as something positive or negative.
I set up everything to a single flat orange-amber hue. I plan to switch everything to a green hue during summer.
It certainly helps to set certain mood.
Re: RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one
#190This is the computer equivalent of "comfort nuts" for a neutered dog, which is really about the owner, not the dog.
And pickup trucks, for some reason.
Slight difference - truck nuts are a crass joke. Comfort nuts are supposed to be a psychological crutch for a dog. The owners actually believe the dog has an issue in the same way that some circumcised humans do.