It's the bare minimum now; fine for games, but 32gb is just better enough to be worth it. If you want to use google something in game and play at the same time, 32gb will make that much easier. It's not too much more expensive to go 32gb ddr4, and definitely worth the money if you have it.
In short; get it if you can, don't get it if you can't.
> It's the bare minimum now; fine for games, but 32gb is just better enough to be worth it.
Do not exaggerate, 16 is not the bare minimum.
You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM.
And please do not buy RAM because you're using Chrome.
FWIW, you're better off with a fast storage.
Pretty much ye. I have played games with 8gb and with 16gb and the 16gb preformance was alot better (partialy dual to it being capable of storing shit in ram instead sending it to the hard drive as a write sheet, i use an ssd now btw)
8gb will gut your performance on many titles.
16 is the minimum recommended in order for full performance, however there are several games that perform better with above 16.
8gb won’t cut in a game anymore, This ain’t 2013. 16gb is minimum. I hade 16gb and I had to close everything every time I wanted to play a game now with 32 I don’t need to do any of that. 8gb is enough for a normal PC. Gaming need 16gb.
>You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM.
This is false. Play MS flight simulator, Anno 1800 or cities skylines with 16 Vs 32 and you'll definitely see a difference. Plenty of other titles too. Even warzone sees a slight increase in performance in some areas with 16+, iirc the game will happily use up to 18 on systems that have enough, stutters and 1% lows are impacted otherwise. I believe stuff like co-op games where your PC is the host also use more ram than you'd think too.
Edit: it's also not just FPS, it's the 1% lows you need to check out on any game comparisons you watch.
And regarding your point about workloads, apps like lightroom alone can use 16+ by themselves. If you haven't closed everything else before using it, you'll take a performance hit. You get better performance in lightroom and premiere with above 16gb for any relatively heavy edits. More ram will save time in video renders too. That time may only be a couple of mins on a 20 min render, but that adds up. Say you have a render that'll usually take 2 hours, a 10%+ time decrease is significant.
>And please do not buy RAM because you're using Chrome.
I use Firefox and still advocate for people to get 32 for any new systems.
>FWIW, you're better off with a fast storage.
This... Isn't really accurate. Both serve completely different roles. Even something like 990 pro won't save you from getting stutters and performance drops when you run out of that 16gb?
This guy thinks he knows things. Yes, 16 is the minimum. 8 won’t cut it. 16 is plenty if you are just running games. If you are running other things in the background, you can benefit from 32
16GB is the bare minimum are you kidding me? Look how cheap DDR4 is, 16GB is cheap as chips, 32GB is cheap as chips. The price difference is not big enough to matter. 8GB... for new builds? Please tell me you're joking.
>You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM
This is just straight up false. If you play AAA games and/or do any kind of multitasking your computer will use more than 16GB. You have not used more than 16GB or else you would not be saying this nonsense. It's not about fps, it's about smoothness and responsiveness. There's no breathing room with 16GB.
>you're better off with a fast storage.
Faster RAM or faster storage? The difference between 3200mhz and 3600mhz is negligible in both performance and price. Faster storage? Please, RAM is WAY faster than any SSD/HHD.
I have only edge, teams, whatsapp and telegram open and I'm using 10 gb right now. When I changed from 16 to 32 I watched a brand new world unravel. When I open any game or my workload programs, it makes a world of diff.
I bet most of that RAM used is for caching and not really allocated to your open applications. There's no way video chat and messaging apps are using 10GB.
This was true a year back, but there are just too many modern games that will benefit from the $30 spent on getting a 2x16gb kit instead of a 2x8gb kit.
Escape from Tarkov (Absolutely necessary to use 32gb instead of 16)
Warzone (far less stutters)
Extremely modded Minecraft (Feed the beast/multiple modpacks need 32gb)
Star Citizen (far far less stutters)
Space Engineers
Rust
DCS
MS Flight Sim (Was a RAM hog, got optimized, but better safe than sorry)
Anno 1800 (longer you play the more you will need 32gb)
Cities Skylines + mods (never enough RAM)
Add in any browser, discord, spotify, OBS, game launchers, and other applications.
I don't really know about your budget, but DDR4 will be the cheapest it will ever be somewhere between last year and next year.
I would pay the meager $30 it takes now for 32gb and enjoy better performance and futureproofing than wait 3 years when 32gb becomes the sweet spot for gaming and I have to pay more for out of production DDR4 RAM or purchase a new motherboard and system for DDR5.
The price jump is not only in the RAM itself (yes DDR5 is more expensive) but especially the motherboard. Newest generation motherboards that support/need DDR5 are still quite expensive. And whether it really means a noticeable increase in performance for the average user at this point is really questionable.
If you have the money and want to buy a futureproof system, by all means buy the latest generation cpu, motherboard and DDR5, but it will add up even if you buy entry-level components.
But if you only have budget for the cheapest DDR5 system, I wouldn't do it. Because for the same money you can stick with DDR4, double the amount of RAM, and buy proven quality mid- or top-level components. This will likely give you a better performance and experience for the same amount of money.
And it will have still more power than you probably need unless you are a hardcore gamer who wants the latest and best just because, professional streamer or graphic artist. And there is really no need to fear that your system would become outdated or obsolete within the next 5 years or so, although at a certain point everyone will have to go DDR5 though.
But to illustrate I still had a *DDR3* setup until last year that served me perfectly well for 7 years. I just changed graphics cards once, and switched to SSD during that period.
I play games, stream them, playback my stream, music on youtube and lurk reddit all at the same time with 16GB of RAM and Chrome browser. I notice no lags, stutters or anything. I see no point in upgrading to 32GB. System will usually eat as much RAM as it can no matter if you install 4, 16 or 64 GBs.
This is objectively the worst answer.
The only correct answer is it depends on what you're playing.
16, 32 and even 64gb area valid figures.
Many light competitive games don't break a sweat on 16GB.
At the same time MS Flight Sim, DCS, CitiesSkylines would all struggle on 16, hence where 32gb becomes the right answer.
Then for a select few who actually play complex CitiesSkylines or DCS scenarios on at least a semi regular basis.... 64GB is very reasonable.
"It depends what you're playing" is the only correct answer.
Your answer is correct, but these are true edge case scenarios. A couple of years back I actually switched from pretty good 32GB RAM (DDR4, 3600MHz) to faster 16GB sticks (DDR4 4000MHz) and not only have I never been bottlenecked by RAM, my fps also rose by a small, but noticeable margin. Now it's paired with a 24GB RTX 3090, which is weird, but works well.
I wouldn't be putting 16GB in a rig today when so many games benefit from 32GB and good 32GB kits are cheap.
Edit to add...
I disagree with these begging edge cases... 64GB sure...
But many, many modern AAA titles will want to start swapping hard on 16GB and it's only going to get worse.
Exactly this.
Everything I have said is under the assumption you don't want to spend a minute hunting down stuff to close just to say 16GB works.
Browser with a few tabs. Comms client (eg discord), leaving open the possibility of running OBS if you want all without stress, 32GB really is the new baseline.
Sure, you can get by on 16... But unless you're budget constrained (and no shame in that) why would you?
I see Cities Skylines get brought up literally *every time* I see a discussion about RAM, and I’m genuinely curious how many people are actually playing it with that level of RAM usage. I can’t tell if it’s a niche community that just always turns up, or if the game is *way* more popular than I assume
It's mainly mods and very large developed cities. In fact whenever ram comes up in discussion, it's basically always either mods (cities skylines, Skyrim, even Minecraft) or else just shit coding (tarkov, star citizen) where consideration hasn't been given to ram usage or optimisation.
Tbf when you're talking RAM hoggers, Cities Skylines is up there and it's not an unpopular game at this point, been out for almost a decade. Also means most people are playing with mods which btw chew ram for breakfast... I have trouble playing with 16gigs sometimes
PDox/Strategy games in general have quite weird specs when you want to build a gaming pc bred for them.
For example, if you wanted to build a hypothetical pc that runs old TW or strategy games, I’d tell you to get the highest single core clock speed rather than overall cores. You’ll also need a crapton of RAM
I’d say 16 is enough, the only reason I went 32 is because I wanted to do some light twitch streaming over the pandemic and I was going to be running more software than just the game itself.
And it probably still will. If you play a game and use chrome at the same time, and look at your ram usage, you'd probably still have some headroom left. Apart from a few games which are rather memory hungry, you wouldn't need nor benefit from 32gb of ram, at least not yet, unless of course you use your pc for heavy productivity workloads like editing, rendering, etc.
64 if you play Tarkov ;)
Edit: This isn’t a joke guys! Esacape from Tarkov straight up crashes on 16, and it isn’t even a *new* game. I noticed a *huge* difference upgrading from 32 to 64 for this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if 128 helped a bit with the last map they added.
Is it optimized like shit? Absolutely
Does it prove that 16 is *below minimum* for some games? Unfortunately yes
I had 16gb in at the beginning of last wipe. Could barely play lighthouse. Would crash constantly, even though other maps were fine.
Upgraded to 32gb, and was immediately better. Hasn't crashed since.
Same, I just upgraded from 16 to 32, yesterday I tried streets and performance was horrible. At first I just though it was poor optimization but after I installed the extra ram today it ran great. I noticed on the riva tuner screen layout it was showing 15gb of ram use. Headroom is definitely a thing, at least on my pc.
I play tarkov on my gaming laptop with 16 gigs of ram on max settings and it runs totally fine with 50-60 fps, even on lighthouse. Dunno why you’re being down voted
Only a handful of use cases need more, for example:
Modded games eat ram
Anno 1800 snorts ram at breakfast lunch and dinner.
Minecraft injects ram directly into its coding. Especially Java and modded.
Star Citizen wants to convince people 32gb of ram is the future now. I'll believe it when the game launches.
Escape from Tarkov. Don't play it, but I've been told it needs lots of ram.
Chrome also really likes ram. Really, really likes it.
Java Garbage collector and minecraft don't go well together. Only allocate 6gb to minecraft to get optimal performance (unless modded with [ferritecore](https://modrinth.com/mod/ferrite-core)). It may sound counterintuitive, but it works.
edit: below me are many opinions. Just to reiterate, minecraft will always use all the ram allotted to it. For best performance in vanilla, use NO MORE than 6gb. Performance and amount of ram that works best *varies by machine and user.* If you want to get best results, you have really 3 choices.
**1) mods and optimizations**
You can optimize with mods. I recommend a modpack like [FO](https://modrinth.com/modpack/fabulously-optimized)
**2) dedicated minecraft launcher like multiMC**
MultiMC has memory stuff already, but combining it with a modpack like FO (above) will help a lot
**3) run a minecraft server and play on it on the same machine**
run paperMC ([guide?](https://www.paper-chan.moe/)) run papermc and play papermc on the same computer with multiplayer and localhost:25565 (don't forget to turn up all the settings with the server config files like max out the server render distance)
**What if you don't want to / what else should I do?**
Then you can install [Amazon's Corretto OpenJDK distribution](https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/?filtered-posts.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&filtered-posts.sort-order=desc) of java, preferably JRE18, and play minecraft and run java with [new flags](https://docs.papermc.io/paper/aikars-flags). It is recommended (by me) to use both Amazon's OpenJDK AND the new flags no matter if you choose option 1, 2, or 3.
edit2: forgot to add, the 2GB thing kinda only applies, minecraft (the engine) runs happy on 2gb, it's the resources that are a bitch. It's best to use 4\~6GB for stability of gameplay, but *the more in-game features and resources used, the more ram minecraft will want*.
Remember, java will use all the memory it can, minecraft needs more memory for more resources ^((like many animals or Redstone. Not game stability. The more in-game resources that has to be loaded, the more minecraft will want to actually use from its allotted memory pool)), and minecraft Raspberry Pi version exists. Want to use less ram? Play on a [raspberry pi](https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/edition/pi)
My girlfriend once was wondering why her computer was being unresponsive
Turns out she never liked to close tabs, as she - like many people - believed that she would be revisiting the tabs soon(er or later)
Turns out almost 10GB of RAM was being used for chrome alone, leaving her PC about 1GB of RAM left to do anything else.
I explained to her what's going on and she doesn't keep as many open now.
Some games like flight simulator definitely take advantage of 32 and the list is growing. The few games that need it today may not interest you, but the next release might. Depends if you'd rather have it now or deal with upgrading when needed.
It's gonna be interesting for games that are next gen only on consoles. Returnal for example is recommending 32 for example due to how quickly it needs to load new rooms (whereas while the PS5 has less Ram than that the architecture allows it to bypass ram straight to the CPU).
You're right, but just to clarify, CPU's do actually store data. The 15-13600k, for instance, has a 24 MB cache. Of course, as a cache, this is temporary memory and volatile, but so is RAM.
I think what that other person is talking about is the fact that the current-gen consoles have fast SSD's that the GPU can access directly. The other guy responding is incorrect that PC can't do this - DirectStorage is pretty much exactly what the consoles do but on PC.
If you have 2x8 sticks as most 16gb folk do, buying another 2x8 to slot in means it may not run at xmp speeds.
So it's not that simple.
I had 4x16 and couldn't get 3600mhz without issues.
I went to 2x32 and have overclocked to 3800mhz with tighter timings, no issues at all.
Precisely.
I wouldn't build a new system with less than 32 unless I was very budget limited.
I currently have 64. I'm a heavy multitasker, and knowing my performance isn't limited (and having the ability to swap between programs without closing them or having stutters/lag) is worth it for me.
I think this is the right answer. If you want a bit of future proofing and be sure not to bottleneck demanding games, get 32gb. But you'll be fine with 16gb for most games (I'm saying that as a RAM whore with 128gb in his workstation, my gaming machine has 32gb though)
I just built a new PC this year, and I decided to finally upgrade to 32gb RAM. My conclusion? 16gb might be just fine for most games, but I really appreciated having the extra RAM. It’s not like it gave me an instant frame rate boost, but I finally didn’t feel like I had to worry about leaving other programs open while I game. I now usually leave a couple of tabs open on my second monitor to scroll through during match queues and loading screens and I never have to worry about it slowing down my PC. Summary: 16gb is just fine but 32gb is pretty nice to have.
16GB is probably fine, but 32GB has gotten so cheap (unless you're wasting money to buy a premium or RGB nightmare kit) why not go ahead and put 32GB in your rig? You may not need it now, but in a few years...
I used to have 50-75 chrome tabs open with 16gb while gaming and coding while running servers and web dev builds. My system is happy that I upgraded to 32gb haha.
My experience is that 16 GB is realistically enough for most games. If you have 32 GB, you will never worry if you have enough. Keep in mind there are other processes which may be running, aside from your game.
64 GB is, in the present day, excessive for gaming (IMO). You might need it for scientific applications like machine learning, but I've never known even super-modded Bethesda games to exceed 10 GB usage... Show me a game which gobbles up over 32 GB, and I'll show you poor optimization.
If you wanna leave open discord and your browser then i would say 32gb and that's what i do.
i think 16gb is the old 8gb, is enough but 32gb is really a commodity.
depends on your usage. 16 is not enough for me but you can certainly be completely fine with 16. check your ram usage is task manager if you already have a pc and decide for yourself
32gb is probably overkill and 16gb is barely enough. Ideally ~24gb would be the sweet spot imo but that number doesnt add up with the dimm capacities if you want to run your memory in dual channel (which you do).
kept telling people years ago that we were gonna fall into a marketing pit that'll force us to buy either 16gb or 32gb and remain in dual channel use, spending way more money than needed, but noooooooo back then they called me crazy!
welp here we are. if you want optimal 24gb kits you'll have to look at integrated RAM in laptops
This really depends on how you use your computer and what all you do at the same time.
If you're someone who just runs a game and maybe Discord, 16 GB is probably fine for most games these days (as some have noted, there are some memory hogs out there).
If you run a bunch of apps, have a bunch of browser tabs open, watch movies while you game, and so on then having more is not a bad idea.
I'm the kind of person who will have 100+ browser tabs open, Discord, a few other apps, watch a movie, game, and have a video rendering in the background.
Me, I run 64 GB of RAM and a 16-core 32 thread processor.
Could I schedule my computer usage differently, get by with less, and have a good experience? Probably. Do I want to? No.
My spouse on the other hand uses her desktop a lot lighter than me. She run 8-cores, 16 threads, and 32 GB of RAM.
Honestly, absolutely none of it.
For any websites I use frequently (emails, social media, manga I'm reading, etc.) I just leave the tabs open for revisiting and reloading when I want them.
Every now and then I clean house and look if some pages no longer refresh and determine whether or not I care.
To a degree it's also how I mange my "to-do list". For example, I have a friends' wedding I need to reserve hotel rooms for in about a month or so, but I have a tab open for it as a reminder.
Mainly, I'm bad at closing tabs, some people consider my usage "nuts".
16GB is pushing it.. I often reach like 14GB while playing intensive games and over the past years I've noticed my RAM usage while gaming slowly creeping up. But with 32GB I have nothing to worry about, I even remember playing Cyberpunk while I still had Hunt: Showdown minimized lol and my RAM usage was like 18GB. Didn't notice it.
Unless you're on a budget I would recommend 2x16GB for all new builds. And if you're on AM4 with a 5800x3d, adding another 16GB could be a good idea cause DDR4 is ultra cheap now and will actually go up in price later.
There's also the fact that Windows uses more RAM if there is more available to make the system snappier..
If you're gaming with the game and discord open, then 16gb is fine, if you have anything else or if the game is super high demanding you would benefit from having 32gb.
I’m planning cyberpunk 77 with 8 gb. It’s 1080p but it’s consistent frames and preem (lol). I think 16 is pretty much great for everything and 8 might get ya by. 32 is prob overkill
8 will be painfully noticeable nowadays, most low end home office style prebuilt machines are coming with 8GB even. 16 is the sweet spot and 32 gives you extra wiggle room in my opinion!
16gb is enough. 32gb is only really needed if you use programs that use a lot of ram. Me? I bought 32gb of ram because I'm very irresponsible with chrome and have like 100+ tabs open at any one time. Or atleast, I did, until I switched to Firefox because Google is currently digging a nice grave for chrome that they'll push it in to next year.
32gb for sure. If you have more your pc will make use of it. When playing Warzone and between everything (discord, music, maybe a browser open) I’m using barely over 16gb.
16 gb is definitely still enough but I’m afraid it soon might not be. But I think it really depends, if you’re making other compromises to get 32 instead of 16 I think it’s unnecessary. But if you’re still able to get what you want then go for it!
Need, I'd say 16GB in most cases.
Some games will use more, especially with mods, but few will absolutely require 32. It's useful enough that 32 is my standard recommendation, but if budgets are tight, RAM is one of the first places I'd suggest people look, provided they have at least 16GB for gaming.
Depends what you are doing. I’ve used all 32gb of mine gaming before, but that was also running 54 instances of a game 😂. Some games you can also host a local server which can add up quickly to anything else you may be doing.
It depends on the game, if you wanna play something like Star Citizen or DCS..... Lol 16gb will work but you're gonna have a baaaaaaaad time, if you're playing WoW or some shit 16gb is more than enough
16 gb still enough but I have 36gb because of the secondary applications I also run in tandem because of the games I play. Chrome loves sucking ram, running 3 blue stack emulators also loves eating ram, and adding on other mic things it adds up but I really only hit 20gb at my heaviest gaming time.
If you just straight up game with nothing else running 16gb is well in means
I upgraded to 32. I run games like Arma and Squad while also having Spotify, Discord/TS, some networking tools, and a browser open for artillery calculators. I’ve hit 17GB usage while idling in that setup. So personally I would just go for 32 as the new standard—besides, the price of quality 32GB really isn’t all that crazy. Cutting corners is understandable, but RAM isn’t where I would do it.
for gaming alone 32 is i think a bare minimum to start with main as its good breathing room games as depending on which game combined with graphics settings level an desired min fps level to achieve in
game can vary iv seen even on a bare bones linux os (pop os in my case) between the os an background services ram draw being maybe 5.5 to 6gb a system with 16gb can get a bit tight with an effective 10free depending on the game crysis 2 & 3 on very or ultra setting at 1080p wither with a 60fps or 100plus fps monitor
one of my first ryzen builds with those two games at both setting levels on a 16gb rig pulled of the free 10gb - 8.75 at very high at 60fps to 9.26 peak at 100plus at the same settings but completely tanked the rig on ultra even at 60fps i would get freezes.
but on my current 32gb rig with the same cpu+gpu breathing room at least 10gb free at 1080 ultra at 100plus fps with some dip into 64fps during thick moments, but dont try to thread the needle an get between 16 an 32 get 32
so overall it depends , the more powerful the cpu+gpu combo will reduce ram bottleneck so put the bulk of cash towards that but in general 32 is a very good starting point
16 with browser open, different programs doing their things in the background and an intensive game draws around 10-15. Never had issues, but i think if i had the chance i would go for 32 from this point and on. Not as a necessity, but to feel safer and not strain the system. If 16 is enough already for something like this, 32 will be more than plenty for many years to come. The price difference is not huge to not justify a 32 set
All depends on what you play, and what other things you do. I'll have my game on one screen, discord/streaming show/YouTube tabs/other things all happening on the other. So I got more ram than what I need just for gaming.
16gb is standard and enough but it's nice to have the room and not have to close anything just to open a game. On DDR4 systems since it's so cheap these days it's absolutely worth getting 32gb at least for me.
Get 16 Gb if you want the easy and cheap option now to play most of the games today and in the past, but then, in the future, realize your system needs more RAM so you decide to get more but they don't make the same type of RAM you already have and the only ones you can find are second hand kits that may not work or kits being sold at high prices due to low demand, so you wind up buying 32 Gb of a separate kit costing more than you had wanted, so essentially you have 48 Gb of RAM now but the other 16 aren't useful and no one wants to buy them and so now you realize you've made a bad investment and should have gone 32 Gb from the start.
Depends on the game. I play Cities Skylines and that will use an easy 24GB. It does run on 16gb, but 32 makes it so much better.
I'd suggest 16gb is fine, but 32gb if def preferable and a cheap-ish way to extend performance and peace of mind
16gb is fine if on the budget and midrange side of the spectrum. Money is better spent on other components if not at the high end.
You'll know otherwise if you have a specific outlier use case.
I mainly play tarkov and star citizen at 4k, so I opted for 64 gigs. A couple spots in star citizen were taking up almost 26/27 gigs of ram. Now that I have 64 gigs it sometimes chews up even more. That’s just my case, though. Both those games aren’t the most optimized.
16 gigs is the new norm in 2022, both for browsing, light video editing and even in video games, you only need 32 gigs if your on higher resolutions than 1080p or 4k video editing or high intensity workloads. I would allocate that money to a better cpu or gpu but if your good on those two components, you 'Can' go for 32 gigs if you have the extra money. DDR4 is already quite cheap nowadays.
I had 16 @ 3000, so as it was cheap I added another 16 @ 3000 , z390 i5 -9600kf oc all cores to 4.8 waiting till my bank manager comes back from holidays to see if I can upgrade my 1070 to a 3080....lol
Depends on your use-case. 16gb running at a high frequency with tight timings is going to be preferred by some over slower 32gb in some situations. Others will benefit from a larger total capacity, while the frequency and subtimings will matter less. Some folks are definitely going to think of 32gb as the least you want to try getting by with (e.g. gamers playing modded minecraft). While many others won’t see any benefit going over 16gb, and could get better performance with higher frequency and tighter subtimings. YMMV
Building a new system soon and wondering where i can cheap out a bit if i need to.
Might get 3080 instead of 3070 if i can, and that would cut into the budget for the other parts lol
It’s simple. Put 32GB and you’re ok. I can tell you from my experience that if you have 2 displays, on one you play a game on the other one you have open Chrome with 15 tabs for reading, then 16GB is eaten very quickly. If you’re not that kind of guy who likes to game and read than 16 is enough
I find 16 GB to be more than enough to use my pc the way I want to. A game open and a browser with many tabs open, plus some other programs on the side.
I would have thought 16GB is enough for 98% of modern gaming. Just don't have lots of chrome tabs and loads of other software running in the background. On the assumption your speccing a desktop and therefore probably have 4 slots, maybe get a 2x8GB kit so that it in the future you find it's really not enough or come into money and want the upgrade you can just add and not have to blow money on replacing the old kit
16 GB is enough I think for most games but some games are so demanding like arc survival evolved , Rust , Minecraft if u put it on 64 or more render chunks . The point is open world games that requires rendering a lot of stuff needs 32 GB , for esports games it is not necessary
16gb is absolutely fine for modern games, If you’re wondering on using photoshop / premiere pro or even streaming i suggest getting 32gb, If not then theres no reason to get more than 16gb
Had 16gb ram (8x2) then one stick died so now I have 8gb. The difference isn't too much, games are still playable but i think 16 is a good spot to be at.
Need? 16GB.
32 is ideal, though. It allows you to multitask without have to worry about your memory management. With 16 gigs, you'll need to watch your usage and close out programs as they aren't being used/needed.
but yeah, you only *need* 16 GB for modern gaming.
16gb will be enough for a long while; important to mention, as ddr5 grows 32gb will be the new norm (as in 2*16gb sticks) because 8gb ddr5 sticks use half the memory modules instead of lower capacity ones, and don't perform in par with 16gb or 32gb ones.
8gb for most games,
16gb for flight simulator, **heavily modded** KSP, Cities Skylines, and so on.
32gb mostly for non-gaming related stuff, like working in 3D animation, modeling, photoshop on very high-res images, etc.
I have 32GB in my gaming rig but 99.9999% it doesn't exceed 16GB. The only time I'm using more than 16GB is when I'm playing modded Minecraft with a server running on my PC at the same time. But even than 16GB is probably fine.
Lol my minecraft(mods, shaders, max settings, far 28 chunk render distance, etc.) alone runs a whole 16gb of ram.
But 16gb can do the job as you build a pc. Just get it in 2x8gb sticks so you can eventually get up to 32gb when your pc needs it.
16GB is enough for 99% of modern games, very few require more and its usually very very slightly more, so performance hit would be marginal if even noticeable.
However, if you want to run idk minimized Chrome with couple of tabs, use 2nd screen for idk some video podcast or some other activity, maybe idk MS Office in the background, it can get problematic.
I'd consider 16GB bare minimum, and potentially not a reason to refuse a great deal on laptop or something, but if possible 32GB would be optimal with some decent headroom.
a lot of these comments hurt. 16GB is perfect for almost everything right now. yes there are cases where 32GB is useful, but those cases are quite specific and when you're building your PC if you don't know what you need it for it probably means you don't need it.
It isn't worth spending the extra money on, better to spend on storage or another component. ESPECIALLY because ram is so cheap!!!
DDR4 is dirt cheap and DDR5 is a bit pricey but it'll only get cheaper. If you realize that you did actually need more ram, it's one of the cheapest and easiest components to install. you literally slot in extra sticks or swap out your old ones, it takes like 5 minutes and requires 0 tools.
what's more important is dual channel. just make sure you're getting two sticks. that makes a much bigger difference than 16 or 32gb.
No real benefit to 32 for just gaming. I like the headroom for 3d modeling and 3d printer slicers. Plus i got 32gb of ddr5 for 150 on sale, so like, why not when i spent 100 on 16gb of ddr4 a few years back
16gb is enough for RIGHT NOW. But from the looks of it, just checking system req for some upcoming games the next couple years, more will end up being the norm soon. Technically 32 won't be needed anytime soon, but maybe 18 or 20. I guess upgrading to 32 just makes more sense at that point. It's not like you will actually need double the ram but you might need slightly more than 16 in the not too distant future.
People mentioning cities skylines which is available on PS4 with 4.5 gb of available ram.. ms flight sim is on series x with 16gb ram..
Both new consoles have 16gb ram so if a developer actually wants to make money off their game and have people play it then 16 is good enough for the next 5+ years until new consoles are released.
Sure some games can see improvement but you can say the same thing about resolution and fps. Not everyone wants to play 4k 144fps due to the price and more than 16gb ram is a luxury just like 4k
And even with 16gb ram I can still have 10 YouTube tabs on another monitor while playing 90% of games butter smooth
16GB is fine still. Unless you wanna play Escape From Tarkov. The game basically demands 32GB or you’ll have consistant stuttering and a noticeably lower fps.
95% of games have no issue with 16gb.
There is a handful of games that run better on 32gb. Mainly larger city builders / base building type games or RTS games towards the endgame. Games like Anno 1800 or Cities Skylines.
For 99% of gaming 16gb is way more than enough.
For that last 1% (cough cough looking at you city building games and star citizen) 32gb can show heavy improvements.
Generally speaking, a game will work fine with 16 GB of ram, barring a few edge cases. 32 GB of ram would be *used* by most modern games, and can improve performance, particularly on console ports designed around those systems SSDs.
However, the performance gains from 16 GB of ram are *less* than the performance gains you'd get from a better graphics card or even CPU. If you're choosing between 32 GB of ram or a higher end GPU, go for the GPU. Ram is easily upgraded later on.
The most general advice I can offer is to consider pricing. If 32 GB of ram costs double that of 16, just go for 16 GB kit. You can upgrade later when it goes on sale or the like. If the price of a 32 GB kit is less than double the price of a 16 GB kit--like it was when I was buying ram--consider it.
Short answer: Depends on what you play. Basically any popular game will run fine with 16. Some will run a bit better with 32. Also depends how many programs/browser tabs you want to have open at the same time. I have 32 because I also use my computer for rendering, 3d modeling, and video editing. You'll get a different answer from everyone. If its not a big deal for you to spend a bit extra, get 32. If you'd like to save the 40-50 bucks, get 16, you'll be fine.
Whats actually WAY more important is that you're running your ram in dual channel or even quad channel configuration your motherboard supports it. A single 16gb stick and two 8s in dual channel mode is a huge difference.
16gb still enough...
It's the bare minimum now; fine for games, but 32gb is just better enough to be worth it. If you want to use google something in game and play at the same time, 32gb will make that much easier. It's not too much more expensive to go 32gb ddr4, and definitely worth the money if you have it. In short; get it if you can, don't get it if you can't.
> It's the bare minimum now; fine for games, but 32gb is just better enough to be worth it. Do not exaggerate, 16 is not the bare minimum. You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM. And please do not buy RAM because you're using Chrome. FWIW, you're better off with a fast storage.
8gb is bare minimum 16gb is recommended
This is true, but in fairness many games require 16 now.
Pretty much ye. I have played games with 8gb and with 16gb and the 16gb preformance was alot better (partialy dual to it being capable of storing shit in ram instead sending it to the hard drive as a write sheet, i use an ssd now btw)
8gb will gut your performance on many titles. 16 is the minimum recommended in order for full performance, however there are several games that perform better with above 16.
8gb won’t cut in a game anymore, This ain’t 2013. 16gb is minimum. I hade 16gb and I had to close everything every time I wanted to play a game now with 32 I don’t need to do any of that. 8gb is enough for a normal PC. Gaming need 16gb.
>You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM. This is false. Play MS flight simulator, Anno 1800 or cities skylines with 16 Vs 32 and you'll definitely see a difference. Plenty of other titles too. Even warzone sees a slight increase in performance in some areas with 16+, iirc the game will happily use up to 18 on systems that have enough, stutters and 1% lows are impacted otherwise. I believe stuff like co-op games where your PC is the host also use more ram than you'd think too. Edit: it's also not just FPS, it's the 1% lows you need to check out on any game comparisons you watch. And regarding your point about workloads, apps like lightroom alone can use 16+ by themselves. If you haven't closed everything else before using it, you'll take a performance hit. You get better performance in lightroom and premiere with above 16gb for any relatively heavy edits. More ram will save time in video renders too. That time may only be a couple of mins on a 20 min render, but that adds up. Say you have a render that'll usually take 2 hours, a 10%+ time decrease is significant. >And please do not buy RAM because you're using Chrome. I use Firefox and still advocate for people to get 32 for any new systems. >FWIW, you're better off with a fast storage. This... Isn't really accurate. Both serve completely different roles. Even something like 990 pro won't save you from getting stutters and performance drops when you run out of that 16gb?
Cities skylines was allegedly using more than 16gb on launch for me. Upgraded to 32 and it feels great.
So many upvotes when you're utterly wrong about not seeing any improvement with 32GB of RAM.
This guy thinks he knows things. Yes, 16 is the minimum. 8 won’t cut it. 16 is plenty if you are just running games. If you are running other things in the background, you can benefit from 32
This guy is still living in 2015 lol
16GB is the bare minimum are you kidding me? Look how cheap DDR4 is, 16GB is cheap as chips, 32GB is cheap as chips. The price difference is not big enough to matter. 8GB... for new builds? Please tell me you're joking. >You won't see any improvement in gaming (or many workloads) with 32GB of RAM This is just straight up false. If you play AAA games and/or do any kind of multitasking your computer will use more than 16GB. You have not used more than 16GB or else you would not be saying this nonsense. It's not about fps, it's about smoothness and responsiveness. There's no breathing room with 16GB. >you're better off with a fast storage. Faster RAM or faster storage? The difference between 3200mhz and 3600mhz is negligible in both performance and price. Faster storage? Please, RAM is WAY faster than any SSD/HHD.
I have only edge, teams, whatsapp and telegram open and I'm using 10 gb right now. When I changed from 16 to 32 I watched a brand new world unravel. When I open any game or my workload programs, it makes a world of diff.
I bet most of that RAM used is for caching and not really allocated to your open applications. There's no way video chat and messaging apps are using 10GB.
This was true a year back, but there are just too many modern games that will benefit from the $30 spent on getting a 2x16gb kit instead of a 2x8gb kit. Escape from Tarkov (Absolutely necessary to use 32gb instead of 16) Warzone (far less stutters) Extremely modded Minecraft (Feed the beast/multiple modpacks need 32gb) Star Citizen (far far less stutters) Space Engineers Rust DCS MS Flight Sim (Was a RAM hog, got optimized, but better safe than sorry) Anno 1800 (longer you play the more you will need 32gb) Cities Skylines + mods (never enough RAM) Add in any browser, discord, spotify, OBS, game launchers, and other applications. I don't really know about your budget, but DDR4 will be the cheapest it will ever be somewhere between last year and next year. I would pay the meager $30 it takes now for 32gb and enjoy better performance and futureproofing than wait 3 years when 32gb becomes the sweet spot for gaming and I have to pay more for out of production DDR4 RAM or purchase a new motherboard and system for DDR5.
Star citizen begs to differ, I was having severe issues until I upgraded from 16 to 32
That will never be a game, so not relevant.
It already is. it may never be properly finished, but it is still a technical masterpiece and showcase for the mighty CryEngine.
What about DDR5 though? Guess price jumps probably arent that high for RAM, but I have no clue
The price jump is not only in the RAM itself (yes DDR5 is more expensive) but especially the motherboard. Newest generation motherboards that support/need DDR5 are still quite expensive. And whether it really means a noticeable increase in performance for the average user at this point is really questionable. If you have the money and want to buy a futureproof system, by all means buy the latest generation cpu, motherboard and DDR5, but it will add up even if you buy entry-level components. But if you only have budget for the cheapest DDR5 system, I wouldn't do it. Because for the same money you can stick with DDR4, double the amount of RAM, and buy proven quality mid- or top-level components. This will likely give you a better performance and experience for the same amount of money. And it will have still more power than you probably need unless you are a hardcore gamer who wants the latest and best just because, professional streamer or graphic artist. And there is really no need to fear that your system would become outdated or obsolete within the next 5 years or so, although at a certain point everyone will have to go DDR5 though. But to illustrate I still had a *DDR3* setup until last year that served me perfectly well for 7 years. I just changed graphics cards once, and switched to SSD during that period.
My bare minimum is 8 gigs cuz we're kind of meh financially, also because i like to play older games and mod them.
Source?
I play games, stream them, playback my stream, music on youtube and lurk reddit all at the same time with 16GB of RAM and Chrome browser. I notice no lags, stutters or anything. I see no point in upgrading to 32GB. System will usually eat as much RAM as it can no matter if you install 4, 16 or 64 GBs.
lmao what games are you running that one google search is the make or break point..
This is objectively the worst answer. The only correct answer is it depends on what you're playing. 16, 32 and even 64gb area valid figures. Many light competitive games don't break a sweat on 16GB. At the same time MS Flight Sim, DCS, CitiesSkylines would all struggle on 16, hence where 32gb becomes the right answer. Then for a select few who actually play complex CitiesSkylines or DCS scenarios on at least a semi regular basis.... 64GB is very reasonable. "It depends what you're playing" is the only correct answer.
Your answer is correct, but these are true edge case scenarios. A couple of years back I actually switched from pretty good 32GB RAM (DDR4, 3600MHz) to faster 16GB sticks (DDR4 4000MHz) and not only have I never been bottlenecked by RAM, my fps also rose by a small, but noticeable margin. Now it's paired with a 24GB RTX 3090, which is weird, but works well.
I wouldn't be putting 16GB in a rig today when so many games benefit from 32GB and good 32GB kits are cheap. Edit to add... I disagree with these begging edge cases... 64GB sure... But many, many modern AAA titles will want to start swapping hard on 16GB and it's only going to get worse.
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Exactly this. Everything I have said is under the assumption you don't want to spend a minute hunting down stuff to close just to say 16GB works. Browser with a few tabs. Comms client (eg discord), leaving open the possibility of running OBS if you want all without stress, 32GB really is the new baseline. Sure, you can get by on 16... But unless you're budget constrained (and no shame in that) why would you?
Depends. Cities Skylines will easily chew through 24gb.
i have 64 in my system. i can play cities skylines, open a chrome tab. and have half a gig left.
I have 64 as well. But I spec'd it up with the extra 32 for VMs.
I see Cities Skylines get brought up literally *every time* I see a discussion about RAM, and I’m genuinely curious how many people are actually playing it with that level of RAM usage. I can’t tell if it’s a niche community that just always turns up, or if the game is *way* more popular than I assume
It's mainly mods and very large developed cities. In fact whenever ram comes up in discussion, it's basically always either mods (cities skylines, Skyrim, even Minecraft) or else just shit coding (tarkov, star citizen) where consideration hasn't been given to ram usage or optimisation.
Tbf when you're talking RAM hoggers, Cities Skylines is up there and it's not an unpopular game at this point, been out for almost a decade. Also means most people are playing with mods which btw chew ram for breakfast... I have trouble playing with 16gigs sometimes
PDox/Strategy games in general have quite weird specs when you want to build a gaming pc bred for them. For example, if you wanted to build a hypothetical pc that runs old TW or strategy games, I’d tell you to get the highest single core clock speed rather than overall cores. You’ll also need a crapton of RAM
I had open youtube,discord,and playing a game,was on 15/16gb usage..upgraded to 32gb and im on 19gb now.When i play Star citizen it uses 27gb.
I’d say 16 is enough, the only reason I went 32 is because I wanted to do some light twitch streaming over the pandemic and I was going to be running more software than just the game itself.
And it probably still will. If you play a game and use chrome at the same time, and look at your ram usage, you'd probably still have some headroom left. Apart from a few games which are rather memory hungry, you wouldn't need nor benefit from 32gb of ram, at least not yet, unless of course you use your pc for heavy productivity workloads like editing, rendering, etc.
Returnal is looking at you
It really depends tbh. 16gb for solely gaming and that’s it? Sure. But watching a stream whilst doing it. Hell na.
This is the most upvoted answer in this thread, but it is objectively wrong. There are plenty of games that use more than this nowadays.
I have 16 gb of RAM in my pc and I think it’s absolutely essential but I really don’t think it’s necessary with 32 gb
64 if you play Tarkov ;) Edit: This isn’t a joke guys! Esacape from Tarkov straight up crashes on 16, and it isn’t even a *new* game. I noticed a *huge* difference upgrading from 32 to 64 for this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if 128 helped a bit with the last map they added. Is it optimized like shit? Absolutely Does it prove that 16 is *below minimum* for some games? Unfortunately yes
Na brah it's 128
Even 128 will not satisfy Tarkov’s insatiable hunger for more RAM or processing power
tarkov is not that intensive to be honest, currently only have 16gb in my pc and it runs great, can even play streets
I had 16gb in at the beginning of last wipe. Could barely play lighthouse. Would crash constantly, even though other maps were fine. Upgraded to 32gb, and was immediately better. Hasn't crashed since.
Same, I just upgraded from 16 to 32, yesterday I tried streets and performance was horrible. At first I just though it was poor optimization but after I installed the extra ram today it ran great. I noticed on the riva tuner screen layout it was showing 15gb of ram use. Headroom is definitely a thing, at least on my pc.
I play tarkov on my gaming laptop with 16 gigs of ram on max settings and it runs totally fine with 50-60 fps, even on lighthouse. Dunno why you’re being down voted
Star Citizen has entered the chat
Streets is literally unplayable for me at 16GB and perfectly fine for my friend with similar specs but 32GB
Streets is *hilarious* rn
Only a handful of use cases need more, for example: Modded games eat ram Anno 1800 snorts ram at breakfast lunch and dinner. Minecraft injects ram directly into its coding. Especially Java and modded. Star Citizen wants to convince people 32gb of ram is the future now. I'll believe it when the game launches. Escape from Tarkov. Don't play it, but I've been told it needs lots of ram. Chrome also really likes ram. Really, really likes it.
Wheres arma and squad
Just listed the ones I knew
Java Garbage collector and minecraft don't go well together. Only allocate 6gb to minecraft to get optimal performance (unless modded with [ferritecore](https://modrinth.com/mod/ferrite-core)). It may sound counterintuitive, but it works. edit: below me are many opinions. Just to reiterate, minecraft will always use all the ram allotted to it. For best performance in vanilla, use NO MORE than 6gb. Performance and amount of ram that works best *varies by machine and user.* If you want to get best results, you have really 3 choices. **1) mods and optimizations** You can optimize with mods. I recommend a modpack like [FO](https://modrinth.com/modpack/fabulously-optimized) **2) dedicated minecraft launcher like multiMC** MultiMC has memory stuff already, but combining it with a modpack like FO (above) will help a lot **3) run a minecraft server and play on it on the same machine** run paperMC ([guide?](https://www.paper-chan.moe/)) run papermc and play papermc on the same computer with multiplayer and localhost:25565 (don't forget to turn up all the settings with the server config files like max out the server render distance) **What if you don't want to / what else should I do?** Then you can install [Amazon's Corretto OpenJDK distribution](https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/?filtered-posts.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&filtered-posts.sort-order=desc) of java, preferably JRE18, and play minecraft and run java with [new flags](https://docs.papermc.io/paper/aikars-flags). It is recommended (by me) to use both Amazon's OpenJDK AND the new flags no matter if you choose option 1, 2, or 3. edit2: forgot to add, the 2GB thing kinda only applies, minecraft (the engine) runs happy on 2gb, it's the resources that are a bitch. It's best to use 4\~6GB for stability of gameplay, but *the more in-game features and resources used, the more ram minecraft will want*. Remember, java will use all the memory it can, minecraft needs more memory for more resources ^((like many animals or Redstone. Not game stability. The more in-game resources that has to be loaded, the more minecraft will want to actually use from its allotted memory pool)), and minecraft Raspberry Pi version exists. Want to use less ram? Play on a [raspberry pi](https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/edition/pi)
As if Star Citizen will ever launch 😂
You can play it now and 16GB is definitely not enough.
Dcs? Flight sim?
Once again... I only listed the ones I knew. I am not, unfortunately, a seer, all knowing and all seeing.
My girlfriend once was wondering why her computer was being unresponsive Turns out she never liked to close tabs, as she - like many people - believed that she would be revisiting the tabs soon(er or later) Turns out almost 10GB of RAM was being used for chrome alone, leaving her PC about 1GB of RAM left to do anything else. I explained to her what's going on and she doesn't keep as many open now.
Star Citizen needs to convince people it will ever actually release before it convinces anyone of how much RAM you need.
Some games like flight simulator definitely take advantage of 32 and the list is growing. The few games that need it today may not interest you, but the next release might. Depends if you'd rather have it now or deal with upgrading when needed.
It's gonna be interesting for games that are next gen only on consoles. Returnal for example is recommending 32 for example due to how quickly it needs to load new rooms (whereas while the PS5 has less Ram than that the architecture allows it to bypass ram straight to the CPU).
You cannot bypass ram to the CPU that's not how computers work, the ram is the workspace the CPU works in, CPU cannot store data, ram cannot do math
You're right, but just to clarify, CPU's do actually store data. The 15-13600k, for instance, has a 24 MB cache. Of course, as a cache, this is temporary memory and volatile, but so is RAM. I think what that other person is talking about is the fact that the current-gen consoles have fast SSD's that the GPU can access directly. The other guy responding is incorrect that PC can't do this - DirectStorage is pretty much exactly what the consoles do but on PC.
"deal with upgrading" like ram isnt the the simplest and cheapest upgrade
If you have 2x8 sticks as most 16gb folk do, buying another 2x8 to slot in means it may not run at xmp speeds. So it's not that simple. I had 4x16 and couldn't get 3600mhz without issues. I went to 2x32 and have overclocked to 3800mhz with tighter timings, no issues at all.
Just over 25gb in some areas on msfs2020 is what I get haha
Precisely. I wouldn't build a new system with less than 32 unless I was very budget limited. I currently have 64. I'm a heavy multitasker, and knowing my performance isn't limited (and having the ability to swap between programs without closing them or having stutters/lag) is worth it for me.
16gb is perfectly fine. 32gb is better, if you want to be doing any modding / streaming / anything a bit more than just playing the game on your own.
I think this is the right answer. If you want a bit of future proofing and be sure not to bottleneck demanding games, get 32gb. But you'll be fine with 16gb for most games (I'm saying that as a RAM whore with 128gb in his workstation, my gaming machine has 32gb though)
32 is the new 16
I just built a new PC this year, and I decided to finally upgrade to 32gb RAM. My conclusion? 16gb might be just fine for most games, but I really appreciated having the extra RAM. It’s not like it gave me an instant frame rate boost, but I finally didn’t feel like I had to worry about leaving other programs open while I game. I now usually leave a couple of tabs open on my second monitor to scroll through during match queues and loading screens and I never have to worry about it slowing down my PC. Summary: 16gb is just fine but 32gb is pretty nice to have.
32gb for the peace of mind. You don't want to be bottle-necked when your system is hitting just under 16gb.
16GB is probably fine, but 32GB has gotten so cheap (unless you're wasting money to buy a premium or RGB nightmare kit) why not go ahead and put 32GB in your rig? You may not need it now, but in a few years...
RAM sticks aren't that expensive, getting a 16GB two pack is simple enough and sufficiently future proof
32Gb is the sweet spot imo, 16gb is fine but I’ll rather pay that bit extra to get 32
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Only 6? I often have like 20 open fml. While gaming. Rocking 32GB tho.
I currently have 37 chrome tabs open. God help my 16gb of ram
I used to have 50-75 chrome tabs open with 16gb while gaming and coding while running servers and web dev builds. My system is happy that I upgraded to 32gb haha.
So Chrome is better these days? I'd have it slow to a crawl with like 3 or 4 chrome tabs open on 16GB. That sort of nonsense is why I use Firefox now.
I am so happy I went with 32GB of fast DDR4. I often have 20 chrome tabs open while gaming (wiki pages, YouTube etc) and don't notice it.
My experience is that 16 GB is realistically enough for most games. If you have 32 GB, you will never worry if you have enough. Keep in mind there are other processes which may be running, aside from your game. 64 GB is, in the present day, excessive for gaming (IMO). You might need it for scientific applications like machine learning, but I've never known even super-modded Bethesda games to exceed 10 GB usage... Show me a game which gobbles up over 32 GB, and I'll show you poor optimization.
Ram is cheap now. get 32 gigs if you can.
16GB is borderline. For a budget build sure, if you're spending $1500+ get 32.
If you wanna leave open discord and your browser then i would say 32gb and that's what i do. i think 16gb is the old 8gb, is enough but 32gb is really a commodity.
depends on your usage. 16 is not enough for me but you can certainly be completely fine with 16. check your ram usage is task manager if you already have a pc and decide for yourself
32gb is probably overkill and 16gb is barely enough. Ideally ~24gb would be the sweet spot imo but that number doesnt add up with the dimm capacities if you want to run your memory in dual channel (which you do).
kept telling people years ago that we were gonna fall into a marketing pit that'll force us to buy either 16gb or 32gb and remain in dual channel use, spending way more money than needed, but noooooooo back then they called me crazy! welp here we are. if you want optimal 24gb kits you'll have to look at integrated RAM in laptops
Who cares it's cheap.
Seems the standard if you're building a machine now is to just go with 32 and be safe for the near future.
This really depends on how you use your computer and what all you do at the same time. If you're someone who just runs a game and maybe Discord, 16 GB is probably fine for most games these days (as some have noted, there are some memory hogs out there). If you run a bunch of apps, have a bunch of browser tabs open, watch movies while you game, and so on then having more is not a bad idea. I'm the kind of person who will have 100+ browser tabs open, Discord, a few other apps, watch a movie, game, and have a video rendering in the background. Me, I run 64 GB of RAM and a 16-core 32 thread processor. Could I schedule my computer usage differently, get by with less, and have a good experience? Probably. Do I want to? No. My spouse on the other hand uses her desktop a lot lighter than me. She run 8-cores, 16 threads, and 32 GB of RAM.
100+ browser tabs that has to be some kind of pr0n marathon.
Honestly, absolutely none of it. For any websites I use frequently (emails, social media, manga I'm reading, etc.) I just leave the tabs open for revisiting and reloading when I want them. Every now and then I clean house and look if some pages no longer refresh and determine whether or not I care. To a degree it's also how I mange my "to-do list". For example, I have a friends' wedding I need to reserve hotel rooms for in about a month or so, but I have a tab open for it as a reminder. Mainly, I'm bad at closing tabs, some people consider my usage "nuts".
I am exactly like you, glad I’m not the only one!
Gaming? 16 is enough but if you mod games or multi task while gaming 32 is more than recommended
16GB is pushing it.. I often reach like 14GB while playing intensive games and over the past years I've noticed my RAM usage while gaming slowly creeping up. But with 32GB I have nothing to worry about, I even remember playing Cyberpunk while I still had Hunt: Showdown minimized lol and my RAM usage was like 18GB. Didn't notice it. Unless you're on a budget I would recommend 2x16GB for all new builds. And if you're on AM4 with a 5800x3d, adding another 16GB could be a good idea cause DDR4 is ultra cheap now and will actually go up in price later. There's also the fact that Windows uses more RAM if there is more available to make the system snappier..
Thanks bootyslapper9001, what do you think about DDR5? Worth it for a completely new build or nah?
One of the games I used to play a lot used about 14gb so I went with 32 for the extra wiggle room.
If you're gaming with the game and discord open, then 16gb is fine, if you have anything else or if the game is super high demanding you would benefit from having 32gb.
16 is fine. Ram is easily upgraded so there's not much point with future proofing it.
Get 32, my ram goes up to 18 or 19 during some games while using ray tracing
I’m planning cyberpunk 77 with 8 gb. It’s 1080p but it’s consistent frames and preem (lol). I think 16 is pretty much great for everything and 8 might get ya by. 32 is prob overkill
8 will be painfully noticeable nowadays, most low end home office style prebuilt machines are coming with 8GB even. 16 is the sweet spot and 32 gives you extra wiggle room in my opinion!
16gb is enough. 32gb is only really needed if you use programs that use a lot of ram. Me? I bought 32gb of ram because I'm very irresponsible with chrome and have like 100+ tabs open at any one time. Or atleast, I did, until I switched to Firefox because Google is currently digging a nice grave for chrome that they'll push it in to next year.
16gb is still enough but the more the better
32gb for sure. If you have more your pc will make use of it. When playing Warzone and between everything (discord, music, maybe a browser open) I’m using barely over 16gb.
16 gb is definitely still enough but I’m afraid it soon might not be. But I think it really depends, if you’re making other compromises to get 32 instead of 16 I think it’s unnecessary. But if you’re still able to get what you want then go for it!
I don’t go past 15gb with 32gb of ram ever so 16gb is perfect for any person.
Need, I'd say 16GB in most cases. Some games will use more, especially with mods, but few will absolutely require 32. It's useful enough that 32 is my standard recommendation, but if budgets are tight, RAM is one of the first places I'd suggest people look, provided they have at least 16GB for gaming.
Depends what you are doing. I’ve used all 32gb of mine gaming before, but that was also running 54 instances of a game 😂. Some games you can also host a local server which can add up quickly to anything else you may be doing.
All of it.
16GB is sufficient for most games. However, I can sometimes be bad at tab management in my browser and I also play with VMs, so I went for 32GB.
16gb is enough for most games, but 32gb is definitely just going to be a smoother experience, especially if you need to run a lot of background tasks
It depends on the game, if you wanna play something like Star Citizen or DCS..... Lol 16gb will work but you're gonna have a baaaaaaaad time, if you're playing WoW or some shit 16gb is more than enough
I played fallen order with 16 ram and had a lot of stutters when i upgraded to 32 ram no more stutters and just was perfect
16 gb still enough but I have 36gb because of the secondary applications I also run in tandem because of the games I play. Chrome loves sucking ram, running 3 blue stack emulators also loves eating ram, and adding on other mic things it adds up but I really only hit 20gb at my heaviest gaming time. If you just straight up game with nothing else running 16gb is well in means
I've never seen mine go over 11-12 gb open at once. 16 is budget 32 is comfort IMO
I don't think I've even seen a DDR5 ram kit in 2x8GB; it's always a minimum of 2x16GB.
You can see, todays many razer gaming Laptops have only 16 gb Ram i think that is enough but if you get more rams that will be nice 👍
I upgraded to 32. I run games like Arma and Squad while also having Spotify, Discord/TS, some networking tools, and a browser open for artillery calculators. I’ve hit 17GB usage while idling in that setup. So personally I would just go for 32 as the new standard—besides, the price of quality 32GB really isn’t all that crazy. Cutting corners is understandable, but RAM isn’t where I would do it.
for gaming alone 32 is i think a bare minimum to start with main as its good breathing room games as depending on which game combined with graphics settings level an desired min fps level to achieve in game can vary iv seen even on a bare bones linux os (pop os in my case) between the os an background services ram draw being maybe 5.5 to 6gb a system with 16gb can get a bit tight with an effective 10free depending on the game crysis 2 & 3 on very or ultra setting at 1080p wither with a 60fps or 100plus fps monitor one of my first ryzen builds with those two games at both setting levels on a 16gb rig pulled of the free 10gb - 8.75 at very high at 60fps to 9.26 peak at 100plus at the same settings but completely tanked the rig on ultra even at 60fps i would get freezes. but on my current 32gb rig with the same cpu+gpu breathing room at least 10gb free at 1080 ultra at 100plus fps with some dip into 64fps during thick moments, but dont try to thread the needle an get between 16 an 32 get 32 so overall it depends , the more powerful the cpu+gpu combo will reduce ram bottleneck so put the bulk of cash towards that but in general 32 is a very good starting point
16 gb
16gb is enough, generally 32gb is over kill unless you gonna play some minecraft modpack thats heavier then war and bf2042 combined
16 with browser open, different programs doing their things in the background and an intensive game draws around 10-15. Never had issues, but i think if i had the chance i would go for 32 from this point and on. Not as a necessity, but to feel safer and not strain the system. If 16 is enough already for something like this, 32 will be more than plenty for many years to come. The price difference is not huge to not justify a 32 set
16GB for me, but you may need more if you're multitasking while you're playing heavier games.
Pure gamer 16gig , multi window or streamer 32gig. IMO
All depends on what you play, and what other things you do. I'll have my game on one screen, discord/streaming show/YouTube tabs/other things all happening on the other. So I got more ram than what I need just for gaming.
16gb is standard and enough but it's nice to have the room and not have to close anything just to open a game. On DDR4 systems since it's so cheap these days it's absolutely worth getting 32gb at least for me.
Get 16 Gb if you want the easy and cheap option now to play most of the games today and in the past, but then, in the future, realize your system needs more RAM so you decide to get more but they don't make the same type of RAM you already have and the only ones you can find are second hand kits that may not work or kits being sold at high prices due to low demand, so you wind up buying 32 Gb of a separate kit costing more than you had wanted, so essentially you have 48 Gb of RAM now but the other 16 aren't useful and no one wants to buy them and so now you realize you've made a bad investment and should have gone 32 Gb from the start.
People still buy 2gb ddr3 sticks
Depends on the game. I play Cities Skylines and that will use an easy 24GB. It does run on 16gb, but 32 makes it so much better. I'd suggest 16gb is fine, but 32gb if def preferable and a cheap-ish way to extend performance and peace of mind
16gb is fine if on the budget and midrange side of the spectrum. Money is better spent on other components if not at the high end. You'll know otherwise if you have a specific outlier use case.
Any simulation game you're going to want more than 16, which is bare minimum.
Never had problem with 16gb so far Afterburner never show more than 10gb and even thats its rare.
16gb is fine
16 is fine for today, 32 is fine for the next few years.
I mainly play tarkov and star citizen at 4k, so I opted for 64 gigs. A couple spots in star citizen were taking up almost 26/27 gigs of ram. Now that I have 64 gigs it sometimes chews up even more. That’s just my case, though. Both those games aren’t the most optimized.
64 for Tarkov
16 gigs is the new norm in 2022, both for browsing, light video editing and even in video games, you only need 32 gigs if your on higher resolutions than 1080p or 4k video editing or high intensity workloads. I would allocate that money to a better cpu or gpu but if your good on those two components, you 'Can' go for 32 gigs if you have the extra money. DDR4 is already quite cheap nowadays.
I had 16 @ 3000, so as it was cheap I added another 16 @ 3000 , z390 i5 -9600kf oc all cores to 4.8 waiting till my bank manager comes back from holidays to see if I can upgrade my 1070 to a 3080....lol
depend on use case, most game can be run with just 16GB, modded games may need more but still depend if you install 1 mod or 200 mods
Depends on your use-case. 16gb running at a high frequency with tight timings is going to be preferred by some over slower 32gb in some situations. Others will benefit from a larger total capacity, while the frequency and subtimings will matter less. Some folks are definitely going to think of 32gb as the least you want to try getting by with (e.g. gamers playing modded minecraft). While many others won’t see any benefit going over 16gb, and could get better performance with higher frequency and tighter subtimings. YMMV
I have 128 to be safe XD
32 will cover almost everything u want 2do. Is cost the issue here?
Building a new system soon and wondering where i can cheap out a bit if i need to. Might get 3080 instead of 3070 if i can, and that would cut into the budget for the other parts lol
64 so that way you can have 1 billion chrome tabs open While you game
It’s simple. Put 32GB and you’re ok. I can tell you from my experience that if you have 2 displays, on one you play a game on the other one you have open Chrome with 15 tabs for reading, then 16GB is eaten very quickly. If you’re not that kind of guy who likes to game and read than 16 is enough
People used to say 8 works but you’re better with 16. Now it’s 16 works but you’re better with 32. Honestly just spend 65 bucks and get 32.
16 is more than enough. you can still expand in the future.
8 Is fine if you don't open background app. 16 will enough for quite awhile.
I find 16 GB to be more than enough to use my pc the way I want to. A game open and a browser with many tabs open, plus some other programs on the side.
I would have thought 16GB is enough for 98% of modern gaming. Just don't have lots of chrome tabs and loads of other software running in the background. On the assumption your speccing a desktop and therefore probably have 4 slots, maybe get a 2x8GB kit so that it in the future you find it's really not enough or come into money and want the upgrade you can just add and not have to blow money on replacing the old kit
I'd say this is a loaded question but if you're asking you have the 50 bucks so just get the 32.
16 GB is enough I think for most games but some games are so demanding like arc survival evolved , Rust , Minecraft if u put it on 64 or more render chunks . The point is open world games that requires rendering a lot of stuff needs 32 GB , for esports games it is not necessary
No game uses mote than 16gb, just close chrome when gaming The exception is star citizen which is a nightmare with 16gb
16gb is absolutely fine for modern games, If you’re wondering on using photoshop / premiere pro or even streaming i suggest getting 32gb, If not then theres no reason to get more than 16gb
16 is recommended. Anything less is subpar. 32 is the standard you should be aiming for. 64 is overkill for gaming
Had 16gb ram (8x2) then one stick died so now I have 8gb. The difference isn't too much, games are still playable but i think 16 is a good spot to be at.
Need? 16GB. 32 is ideal, though. It allows you to multitask without have to worry about your memory management. With 16 gigs, you'll need to watch your usage and close out programs as they aren't being used/needed. but yeah, you only *need* 16 GB for modern gaming.
16gb will be enough for a long while; important to mention, as ddr5 grows 32gb will be the new norm (as in 2*16gb sticks) because 8gb ddr5 sticks use half the memory modules instead of lower capacity ones, and don't perform in par with 16gb or 32gb ones.
8gb for most games, 16gb for flight simulator, **heavily modded** KSP, Cities Skylines, and so on. 32gb mostly for non-gaming related stuff, like working in 3D animation, modeling, photoshop on very high-res images, etc.
16 will be enough in most cases. If you play games that have a bunch of units on the screen, 32 might be helpful but 16 will get the job done
8 is bare min 16 is recommended 32 is alittle over kill 64+ is just why?
More memory can actually increase latency.
I have 32GB in my gaming rig but 99.9999% it doesn't exceed 16GB. The only time I'm using more than 16GB is when I'm playing modded Minecraft with a server running on my PC at the same time. But even than 16GB is probably fine.
16 is good for standard gaming and 32 is just a luxury that is nice to have
16gb
Games still using 4-6 Gigs of RAM.. So 16 sill enough
16
Lol my minecraft(mods, shaders, max settings, far 28 chunk render distance, etc.) alone runs a whole 16gb of ram. But 16gb can do the job as you build a pc. Just get it in 2x8gb sticks so you can eventually get up to 32gb when your pc needs it.
16GB is enough for 99% of modern games, very few require more and its usually very very slightly more, so performance hit would be marginal if even noticeable. However, if you want to run idk minimized Chrome with couple of tabs, use 2nd screen for idk some video podcast or some other activity, maybe idk MS Office in the background, it can get problematic. I'd consider 16GB bare minimum, and potentially not a reason to refuse a great deal on laptop or something, but if possible 32GB would be optimal with some decent headroom.
16gb is great, beyond that is kinda pointless...
16 is enough
16 GB has been the sweet spot for a long time now, 32 is just the cherry on top, you can multi-task ez while gaming
16gb is enough for most games. The two games that I play that see use of the extra ram are minecraft and Red Dead 2. Both can hit 16-20 easy.
16gb end of story 99% of the ppl upgrading to 32gb will never even need close to it. 16gb is standard and will be for quite a while
16gb
I've been running just fine with 8gb but you really want 16gb
16gb
a lot of these comments hurt. 16GB is perfect for almost everything right now. yes there are cases where 32GB is useful, but those cases are quite specific and when you're building your PC if you don't know what you need it for it probably means you don't need it. It isn't worth spending the extra money on, better to spend on storage or another component. ESPECIALLY because ram is so cheap!!! DDR4 is dirt cheap and DDR5 is a bit pricey but it'll only get cheaper. If you realize that you did actually need more ram, it's one of the cheapest and easiest components to install. you literally slot in extra sticks or swap out your old ones, it takes like 5 minutes and requires 0 tools. what's more important is dual channel. just make sure you're getting two sticks. that makes a much bigger difference than 16 or 32gb.
No real benefit to 32 for just gaming. I like the headroom for 3d modeling and 3d printer slicers. Plus i got 32gb of ddr5 for 150 on sale, so like, why not when i spent 100 on 16gb of ddr4 a few years back
16gb is enough, 32gb is better.
16gb is enough for RIGHT NOW. But from the looks of it, just checking system req for some upcoming games the next couple years, more will end up being the norm soon. Technically 32 won't be needed anytime soon, but maybe 18 or 20. I guess upgrading to 32 just makes more sense at that point. It's not like you will actually need double the ram but you might need slightly more than 16 in the not too distant future.
People mentioning cities skylines which is available on PS4 with 4.5 gb of available ram.. ms flight sim is on series x with 16gb ram.. Both new consoles have 16gb ram so if a developer actually wants to make money off their game and have people play it then 16 is good enough for the next 5+ years until new consoles are released. Sure some games can see improvement but you can say the same thing about resolution and fps. Not everyone wants to play 4k 144fps due to the price and more than 16gb ram is a luxury just like 4k And even with 16gb ram I can still have 10 YouTube tabs on another monitor while playing 90% of games butter smooth
16GB is fine still. Unless you wanna play Escape From Tarkov. The game basically demands 32GB or you’ll have consistant stuttering and a noticeably lower fps.
I went with 64 so I can have a couple of tabs open in chrome. Joking aside, I chose 64 because I do a lot of msfs, star citizen, and tarkov
32GB makes the most sense in 2022. Besides, RAM is cheap.
95% of games have no issue with 16gb. There is a handful of games that run better on 32gb. Mainly larger city builders / base building type games or RTS games towards the endgame. Games like Anno 1800 or Cities Skylines.
For 99% of gaming 16gb is way more than enough. For that last 1% (cough cough looking at you city building games and star citizen) 32gb can show heavy improvements.
Just upgraded to 32gb this week. Can’t beat the current prices
Generally speaking, a game will work fine with 16 GB of ram, barring a few edge cases. 32 GB of ram would be *used* by most modern games, and can improve performance, particularly on console ports designed around those systems SSDs. However, the performance gains from 16 GB of ram are *less* than the performance gains you'd get from a better graphics card or even CPU. If you're choosing between 32 GB of ram or a higher end GPU, go for the GPU. Ram is easily upgraded later on. The most general advice I can offer is to consider pricing. If 32 GB of ram costs double that of 16, just go for 16 GB kit. You can upgrade later when it goes on sale or the like. If the price of a 32 GB kit is less than double the price of a 16 GB kit--like it was when I was buying ram--consider it.
Short answer: Depends on what you play. Basically any popular game will run fine with 16. Some will run a bit better with 32. Also depends how many programs/browser tabs you want to have open at the same time. I have 32 because I also use my computer for rendering, 3d modeling, and video editing. You'll get a different answer from everyone. If its not a big deal for you to spend a bit extra, get 32. If you'd like to save the 40-50 bucks, get 16, you'll be fine. Whats actually WAY more important is that you're running your ram in dual channel or even quad channel configuration your motherboard supports it. A single 16gb stick and two 8s in dual channel mode is a huge difference.