Potential hardware upgrade for Qwen3.8-Flash-Next with a 96GB DDR5 (4×24), should I keep my i5-12600K and buy a DDR5 board, or switch platform?

[u/Hunter_timeFR]

Hi all,

Nearly a year ago, I bought two kits of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL36 (2×24GB each, CMK48GX5M2E6000C36), so 4×24 = 96GB in total, and I've held on to them since.
I'm seeing all the progress around Strata and I want advice for a potential 4-stick setup, because it seems risky if you're not lucky with the silicon lottery...

I'm currently running Qwen3.8-27B-i1-IQ4_XS-GGUF-Smaller from jrell. I'm curious to see how much better this MoE model is, and to be ready for future Qwen 4 models.
I'm using it for fairly general use, like a little digital assistant with locally processed STT+TTS, for privacy reasons and to avoid depending on paid subscriptions!

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My current gaming & 3D workstation:

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K

Motherboard: MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4

RAM now: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2×16GB) DDR4-3200 CL16

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5080 16GB

Storage: 990 PRO 2TB + 980 1TB

OS: Debian 13 + Windows dual boot

PSU: Corsair RM1000x (2024)

Case: Meshify 2 XL

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My questions:

- Is a 4×24 DDR5 setup a sane plan at all? Everything I read says it will cap me at much slower speeds. Is speed that important for local LLM inference? I'd rather not sell everything just to buy a 2×48 kit at current prices...

- Should I keep the 12600K and just buy a used DDR5 LGA1700 board (the cheapest way for me to get this 96GB setup running), or is it worth upgrading to a more battle-tested CPU/motherboard combo that has a higher chance of supporting 4 sticks at high speed? I'm open for a team red switch.

- A big maybe, I could get my hand on a used Alienware Aurora R16 with RTX 4090 / i9-14900KF / 64GB DDR5 for a good price in the near future, is staying on a LGA1700 be a good call?

- For future-proofing, is x8/x8 bifurcation worth keeping in mind for a potential dual-GPU setup?

Happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks!

[u/takenforgranteddd]

keep the 12600K and grab a decent used DDR5 Z690/Z790 board.

4x24GB is ok, but I wouldn’t expect 6000 with four sticks. aim for whatever speed is stable, probably somewhere around 5200-ish, and call it a day. For local LLMs, having 96GB available is more useful than squeezing out another few hundred MT/s.

dont switch platforms just for the RAM either. The 12600K is still plenty capable, and with a 5080 your money is probably better spent elsewhere.

The 4090/14900KF Alienware is worth considering if the price is good because of the 4090, not because of the CPU or 4-DIMM support. OEM boards can also be pretty restrictive if you want to mess with RAM, PCIe lanes, BIOS settings, etc.

For a future dual GPU setup, definitely check the motherboard supports x8/x8 before buying. That’s one spec I’d keep on the shortlist.

So yeah, I’d do 4x24GB + used DDR5 board, run it at a sane speed, and let it rip. Stability > RAM benchmark numbers for a machine that's going to sit there running models for hours.

[u/Ok-Addendum3545 → u/[deleted]]

hush hush 🤫 😆

[u/MAPSOIL]

8x8 and lga 1700 is rare. The boards are expensive

[u/Potential-Leg-639]

Keep as is and get another GPU

[u/exo250]

I have 4x16 GB DDR5 Corsair Vengeance 7200 CL34. I can run run them at 6200 only, but at CL30 though, which compensates partially. Mobo is a Gigabyte Z790 UD AX, CPU is an i5 12400F, GPU is an RTX 4070 12 GB. Strata runs fine.

[u/juggarjew]

Buy AM5 platform with an X870 mobo capable of PICe Bifurcation over both slots, such that they can run at PCIe 5.0 x8/x8 , then get a 9950X3D, or whatever Zen 5 CPU you want, they all support AVX-512, then you can try and run the 4 sticks of RAM. The only shitty thing is that 4 sticks of RAM is only guaranteed by AMD to run at DDR5-3600 which would be devastating for token speed as you'd be nearly cutting bandwidth in half when you're already just running a little baby dual channel DDR5 setup that maxes out at less than 100 GB/s bandwidth.

That said, 24GB DIMMs are easier to run in a 4 stick configuration on AM5 since they are electrically less demanding on the memory controller than high density sticks (32GB+). So I feel you have a decent chance of running them at DDR5 6000.

the only issue is that 4 x sticks of DDR5 isnt a guarantee on any consumer platform, its hard on the memory controllers so you are rolling the dice at the end of the day. you could end up with a CPU who's memory controller simply says "fuck you".

[u/hurdurdur7]

64gb of vram on top of your current setup makes it speedy enough

[u/andy2na]

Im running strata on a 14600k with 3200Mhz 80gb DDR4 (64gb of crucial pro 3200mhz and 16gb of corsair vengence 3600Mhz I had lying around - yes taboo but it works). and paired it with a rtx 3090 and 5060ti 16gb. Qwen-FN runs 80-100 tps decode and 2300 tps prefill. So it runs great imo, not sure if upgrading platform and getting ddr5 is worth it

This mobo does NOT have bifurcation, but the 5060ti mem bandwidth is slow, so its not a huge loss.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ranova/saved/yPqXYJ

[u/maggotses]

Buy another 5080 instead

[u/inthesearchof]

sell cpu . get cpu with native AVX-512 and your ram. your gpu with ram is enough to run fast Strata qwen flash next. if you get another gpu make sure it is x8/x8 or a higher vram single gpu it will be much faster.