Hi all, hoping to get some advice here. I'm currently running a rig I set up late-2016. At the time, I got myself an ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance LED (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 in Channels 1 & 3 (the SKU is CMU16GX4M2C3200C16), and a SanDisk M.2 SATA 240GB drive (the SKU is SD8SN8U256G1122). So, pretty old parts and 8 years on, I'd like to do a refresh.

My first question therefore is, what is the likelihood that I can get any RAM that will still work in my system other than the 'value' RAM sticks that are 2666Mhz or thereabouts? Would the updated version of my RAM (in this case Vengeance RGB) with the same timings and using the same XMP profiles have any chance of working at all, even if I mix with my current RAM in the other 2 slots (or completely replace, I'm open to that)? Or are my options to either go all in on the cheapo RAM or upgrade mobo/CPU/RAM all at once? 'Cause that's pretty expensive right now, but if I have to, I have to.

My second question is that I've bought myself the WD Blue SN570 500GB NVMe M.2 drive to replace my current SanDisk boot drive. It should work in my mobo, I hope - the M.2 slot accepts either NMVe or SATA, and I don't particularly care that it runs only in PCIe 3.0. More importantly, I'd like to know whether I need to get a heatsink for it - I'm hoping not, since it's not super high-performance or anything, and the kit is just the bare SSD, more or less.

Thanks to all the sifu for your help!

Is this likely to work? Because 2023/2024 RAM isn't likely going to be on the QVL for a 2016 motherboard, which is what concerns me. I don't mind making a full replacement if I'm guaranteed that this will work in an old setup I don't even mind running everything using slower RAM speeds as long as everything remains stable (let's be honest, the games I can run on this machine won't be anything latest and greatest anyway).

Thank you all the sifu who have replied thus far. If I do this RAM replacement/addition, I will probably pop down to actual Low Yat with the whole unit and test it onsite. I was just worried about compatibility; if this is less of an issue than I thought, I feel more relieved.

As for SSD cooling, it's really just a boot SSD (my games are on a SATA SSD and everything else is on HDDs) so after the initial imaging from my current SATA M.2 to the new NVMe, the workload should be really minimal. If I can get away without a heatsink without the thing melting or frying or lasting only 2 years instead of 7-8, that's pretty much all I care about.

Am willing to wait for more advice and recommendations, though.

Gaming is one thing, I also do a lot of VM testing while additionally running WSL, and the less said about my browser tabs the better. I agree that RAM speed is less of a concern; stability is the primary issue I worry about. I'll see if the Vengeance LPX sticks will work in the mobo; thanks for the recommendation. I do also agree that more RAM is not so important, but my SSD's write life is 0% remaining according to WD Dashboard, so that one I really do have to change out. It annoys me that HWiNFO says it still has 79% life remaining, though.

I bought the WD because of its price at the time, nothing else - it will still be faster than the SATA SSD it replaces. All I want out of this system is another few years before I do a full system refresh. I'm waiting on ASUS to come back to me on whether there will be a new BIOS specifically to deal with LogoFAIL; if not, I might just bite the bullet and buy everything new. At that time, I definitely will go all in with DRAM-cached SSD; possibly 1TB even as a boot drive just for longevity.

I'm an Intel fanboy when it comes to my main machine and AMD for my HTPC/file server, but apparently I should have done it the other way around, because Intel's idle power consumption is better and AMD's X3D gaming performance is off the charts. Oh well. Anyway, if I buy new now, I'll probably go for a last-gen (arguably still current-gen) 13600K/13700K. Possibly an ARC if I can find one. The other GPUs are really priced beyond my liking.

Alas, I'm in M'sia so our customer protection laws are, well, they're what they are. I'll just have to bite the bullet and bring the thing down to the shops and test it there if they allow it. My current Corsair RAM is from Samsung, but I haven't a clue beyond that.

According to CrystalDiskInfo, it's the Media Wearout Indicator that's giving the red light warning. Yeah, the WD SSD is a stopgap because after all, my machine is getting on in years. I'll just run it for as long as it will go and then move on. But that's also why I want to have a lot of RAM so running VMs isn't so taxing. In any case the VMs are stored on spinning platters so hopefully any paging in the guest OS happens on the HDD. The VM software itself, well, that's where the extra RAM comes in, or so I hope.