Someone has the need, the need for speed

While waiting in line at Microcenter for an associate to get me an SSD, I heard an interesting conversation.  The guy in front of me was talking to an associate.  He wanted triple-channel memory.  I had never heard of triple-channel memory before, but apparently it is the new "thing" that tech-speed people want.  He wanted a lot of it, too.  He wanted 16GB.  The associate was having trouble finding a 16GB triple-channel kit.  Now, I'm pretty ignorant about the subject, but my guess is that the problem is with basic mathematics (16 mod 3 != 0 ).  The associate tried to talk the person into a 12GB kit (12 mod 3 = 0), but the person said that 12GB is not enough RAM.  He said that he can tell when all his RAM is used up because it starts swapping.  He said everything slows to a crawl.  The associate suggested that the person overclock the RAM, and the person replied that the CPU and RAM are already overclocked.  He said that the motherboard he has makes it really easy to overclock.  The associate finally asked what the person was doing that required that kind of performance.  He asked if the person had a bunch of virtual machines running.  That is when the customer responded, "I do online racing".

My head almost blew up.  That is almost up there with "If it weren't for that horse, I wouldn't have made it through that year in college".  My mind first went to an online video game.   What video game consumes 16GB of RAM?  RAM like that makes me think calculations.  My mind next thought of betting on races online, and he has some sort of program to calculate who he should bet on.  If I was doing that, I would have responded with something about math.  I wouldn't want to be thought of an an obsessive gambler.  I couldn't figure it out.  Maybe he was bad at the game and decided it was the computer's fault.  If his computer was faster, his car would be faster.  The only logical thing I could think of is he has a virus on his computer.

Chances are, he has a custom built system.  Most pre-built PC's don't come with a motherboard that supports overclocking that easily.  To overclock, you need expensive heatsinks and fans.  You sometimes need special CPU's that allow overclocking.  He already had 16GB of RAM.  He wanted to replace that with triple-channel memory.  All of that adds up to a lot of money spent on this computer.  And what was he doing with this expensive computer?  Online racing!  Meanwhile, I'm thinking to myself, "Why doesn't he spend $10 on anti-virus".