Programmers, how much memory do you typically use

[nothotscott]

I’m currently in the process of upgrading my system. I have 8gb of DDR3 RAM and I’m finding myself more and more running out of system memory. I do more programming than gaming on my machine and was wondering if any other programmers have an idea of the maximum memory usage they’ll see.

 

Typical programs I’ll have open, sometimes all at once (at least I need them open all at once sometimes but will sacrifice programs to not run out of memory)

• Chrome (half my RAM right there with a few tabs of stackoverflow)
• Discord
• Visual Studio 2019
• Notepad++
• Bitvise SSH client
• Windows RDP
• Share X
• Many windows of File Explorer
• Typical background tasks like stream and f.lux

[Mateyyy]

I think 16GB would be plenty for your use case.

While I currently don't really do much programming/coding (just fairly basic CE uni tasks for now), I haven't had any problems even on my laptop with just 8GB of RAM. The biggest RAM hog for me, as you've also mentioned, has always been Chrome, but with 16GB and up of RAM, the amount of tabs you have open becomes almost a non-issue (at least for me).

[krysta24]

I´m OK with 16GB, but it really depends on what you do. I don´t do big projects. (I´m still student)  8GB would be limiting for me too though.

[Eigenvektor]

I'm also on 16 GB and haven't run into any major issues so far. I'm mostly using Firefox, IntelliJ (UE), Android Studio, VS Code. I am thinking about going 32 GB in the future, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

 

Spoiler

~edit: I've just opened the project I usually work on and did some typical work related things and it looks like I'm topping out around 10 GB. I haven't really been working of course, so some debugging, running tests etc. might increase it a little more, but I think 16 GB is still pretty fine.

[W1ll1aming]

37 minutes ago, nothotscott said:

• Chrome (half my RAM right there with a few tabs of stackoverflow)

so i agree with the others, 16gb is good enought. i see if you going to use 

Doing VS2019 with winforms, you can get up to 6gb+

 

Also yeah using a 10 tabs in chrome + vs2019 could reach be 9GB as i seen multiple times on my system when solution is running.

[minibois]

I'm doing fine on 8GB in my laptop, for relatively small projects and little to no background tasks, but on my desktop I regurlarly hit the page file with 16GB, so i would recommend at least 16GB

[mr mans]

At work I'm on a system with 32GB of memory and between several instances of VS2015/2017/2019, browser tabs, and active debug sessions, I consume around 20-25GB on average. You can make do on 8GB but for me the idea is to not sacrifice anything. Who wants to struggle unnecessarily when working?