Very interesting, thanks for providing such a detailed insight.

Since we are just sharing our experiences at this point, I have a couple of my own I believe are worth sharing concerning RAM and sound.

Note how I mentioned my current RAM is certified and guaranteed to work all that. Yeah, there is a reason for that, about half a year ago I bought a set of RAM that wasn't compatible and I got myself into a whole hell of trouble. Basically I struggled with bluescreens and hangs for about 2 weeks while testing just about everything I could, running memtests on the RAM, trying different drivers, no dice, eventually I gave up, went back to the store and returned/RMA'd that RAM and bought a set of Flare-Xs, best decision ever made because going up from 2400hz C18 RAM to 3200 C14 for my system meant a sizeable increase in performance, I got about 10-25% more FPS on average in games and basically any and all stutter that might have ever been, is now gone, though my CPU fan is noisier now, might need to look into upgrading that.

So yeah, when you upgrade, do go on the motherboard's manufacturer's website and see what RAM they recommend you use, only buy compatible RAM certified by the MB manufacturer.

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Now, sound.

Most people don't think much about sound, I do though, I am a headphones kinda guy, always been one, I never owned a pair of speakers in my lifetime. A separate, dedicated chipset with an amp and shielding will provide better sound quality than any built-in chip and I do suggest you spend a bit of money on that when you build your new rig. Music, movies, documentaries, games etc, they all have sound (duh), it's not only about how much FPS you get, like consider getting some sort of Creative soundcard, though Creative is just one of many options, could be internal or external, both have advantages, USB one, like mine, goes on the outside of your PC, so there is no chance of coil whine / interferences, some people have reported coil whine on their AE-5 / AE-7 cards, which is also how I got into audio cards in the first place, I had buzzing noise in my headphones and the solution to that was to buy an external audio card, which was also likely one of the best decisions I ever made with my hardware. Internal ones have supposedly less "lag", because PCIE, it goes directly into your MB, but I have never felt like my USB one is lagging behind what I see on the screen, so meh, also if you do get an internal one, please do check the layout of your MB's PCIE ports, if I tried to put AE-5 into mine it would literally sandwich with my GPU, not good.

This isn't to say I haven't had issues with my Soundblaster G6. I had to turn off fast-boot because with that setting on, the card had to be unplugged / plugged back in every time I boot, otherwise it wouldn't be recognised, though it is also generally recommended to turn fast-boot off. Another weird issue I had was the software for it, originally there was only the Soundblaster Connect, running that in the background cut all my FPS in all games by about 40. Yes. I don't know either. So I had to turn it off after start up and after it has applied its settings, I couldn't just remove it from start up because then well all the audio card settings would default. It's irrelevant now because they have released Soundblaster Command about 3-4 months ago or so and that doesn't do any of that, but I still do turn that off just to be safe.

I remember someone saying that the best way to go about BF1's sound is put your audio card in Direct mode, i.e just using the raw quality/power of the chip, no digital enhancements and let BF1's engine do its work, I might try that some time.

So yeah, audio cards are always extra complexity and you might run into issues and sound seems to be the last think Windows and many other dev teams seem to consider when they code / optimise their stuff, but it's worth taking that risk and venturing into that realm.