I have been running my TrueNAS machine on 16 GB of RAM for over a year without issue. But due to the hardware being nearly 10 years old, I decided to replace the old RAM sticks with newer ones. In doing so I am upgrading from 16 GB to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM.
The price for 32 GB of RAM was essentially identical to 16 GB of RAM. So it seemed like a logical choice.
All of this is to ask, “Are there any performance penalties or other issues I should be aware of before swapping out the 10 year old RAM sticks for the newer ones?” I wouldn’t think so, but I generally tend to play it safe when upgrading my hardware.
Does anyone have any experience with upgrading RAM on a bare metal machine running TrueNAS? Your input is valued.
If your environment is running with 16GB with good performance, with 32GB, the performance will be equal or better for some activities.
In the case of replacing old sticks with new ones, if you came to me before buying I wouldn’t even recommend the replacement. If they are server memories, especially if they are DDR4 and not DDR3, there would be no reason to replace them, unless you were going to increase the quantity due to the demand for internal services running on the TrueNAS.
I have environments with more than 30 users using the TrueNAS with 16GB of DDR3 RAM on top of that (an older Dell server) with some performance leeway and I don’t plan on replacing them unless it’s to get a newer server for the client.
I appreciate your response. It is impressive to hear you can support 30 users on a TrueNAS machine with only 16 GB of DDR4 RAM. I can see why you wouldn’t recommend replacing the existing sticks.
The two reason why I chose to replace the older RAM is a fear the hardware might fail, given the sticks are almost 10 years old and from an unknown manufacturer. But are you saying DDR4 RAM generally has a life expectancy of more than 10 years? I have heard RAM typically lasts a lifetime.
Ultimately I wasn’t certain of the older RAM’s quality, so I chose to invest in some new and decent replacements. Perhaps it was a waste of money?
In terms of hardware, the only things that are worth keeping an eye on and changing from time to time to avoid downtime are the disks, RAM, CPU and quality motherboards that are made to last a long time. I have a 2008 desktop running with the same hardware without any problems, but it is a Core2Quad with Samsung memory on an Asus motherboard and Corsair power supply. I have only changed the disks twice from this kit.
If you are using a generic brand desktop kit and cannot stop using it, perhaps instead of changing the memory it would be viable to exchange it for a used server kit like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
Now, if it is for a home lab and if there is an error, you can open it, clean the memory and turn the server back on. In my opinion, it was an unnecessary expense, although it was a small expense.
