if your OS recognizes it, no it's not a waste. vista basic i think recognizes 2 gigs? i have ultimate and i have 4 gigs on mine. i wouldnt think of going less. especially with games nowadays. vista itself takes up a lot of ram to function itself also. water cooling is neat, but i had a bad experience when i did mine even tho i listened to everyone else and did what i should do, and didnt do what i shouldnt do, so i'm going to stick with good ol' fans from now on.
steve...you see the crysis expansion? i think it's out now...or going to be very soon. supposed to be a smoother engine to run better on more mild machines...which just means it'll run THAT much better on beefy ones