How much memory do I need?

[shinegull]

I've always heard that the amount of memory I would need is 16gb, when I'm looking at task manager, I'm regularly hitting 12gb of usage regularly at minimum, with max amount being 24gb. In some cases, I've seen my ram go to 100%, in bursts, and when that happens, my computer slows down for a bit, before it memory usage drops back down. So assuming that, I would have a lot of backgrounds open, with monitoring software running as well, on top of programs and lots of tabs open at once, how much ram would I actually need would 64gb be enough? or should i go for 128gb? that sounds a little overkill to me but, I've noticed as time goes on, I've been running more and more things at once.

[leclod]

I have 16GB. I rarely use more than 9GB.

You must be a "pro"

[whispous]

As you run more and heavier stuff, you need more memory - infinitely. You need to decide where your limit is.

 

If you want us to suggest what might be a reasonable amount, tell us how much memory everything you want to run uses together but by that stage, I think you'll know

 

[shinegull]

4 minutes ago, leclod said:

I have 16GB. I rarely use more than 9GB.

You must be a "pro"

yea, "pro". In my case, it means have everything turn on and start automatically once pc is on, so i dont need to wait for things to load when when i open them. and dont wanna bother turning them off, cuz im lazy like that.

[shinegull]

4 minutes ago, whispous said:

As you run more and heavier stuff, you need more memory - infinitely. You need to decide where your limit is.

 

If you want us to suggest what might be a reasonable amount, tell us how much memory everything you want to run uses together but by that stage, I think you'll know

 

Thanks, I guess i'll make a list or something

[Mark Kaine]

Depends how much crap you have running in background .

[leclod]

F... ! I'm at 13.8GB,

 

Edit : 2GB alone for the idle Epic Game Launcher, is this real ?

Close Firefox and down to 7.4GB

[Chiyawa]

Hmm, it's odd for a normal average users to hit that high, but yeah, depends on what you are using.

 

Basically, more RAM means better performance, but you won't see much performance improvement if you don't use that high. So, from your comment, your RAM usage average is 12GB. I would suggest you to go for 32GB and see how your system perform. If you have the budget to go 64GB, then it's up to you. Another thing that you can try is probably 48GB (2x 16GB + 2x 8GB, assuming your system has 4 slots of RAM and you have existing 2x 8GB RAM, so you only need to add 2x 16GB RAM).

 

By the way, why would you assume you need up to 64GB (or even 128GB) of RAM?

[Chiyawa]

3 minutes ago, leclod said:

F... ! I'm at 13.8GB,

 

Edit : 2GB alone for the idle Epic Game Launcher, is this real ?

Well, I think it's logical, but 2GB might be a little bit over. Steam do take about 1GB of RAM when I'm browsing the store (I think the client is 700MB when it start up, but since they integrate Firefox web browsers, so I guess they required that much memory).

[DanielNS84]

3 hours ago, shinegull said:

Thanks, I guess i'll make a list or something

This, everyone's different but there are a few tiers that we know. 90% of games see no more performance above 8GB, some do better with 16GB and 16GB kits are the baseline these days so I wouldn't go below this. For professional use 32GB is a good baseline unless you have high memory requirements for something but likely if that's the case you'd already know that you have these higher requirements (unless you're new at it lol). Some of this is kind of a moot point since if you're building a work PC you usually aren't gonna balk at the $80 difference between 16GB and 32GB for a kit (They're pretty cheap...16GB kits like this for $70 or 32GB kits like this for $150) so starting at 32GB for work is what I'd recommend at a minimum for that. Having said all that, many of these applications recommend ECC or quad channel+ memory for stability/performance respectively depending on if it's a production environment so you have to consider that as well (Especially since good ECC sticks known to play well with Ryzen can be $140 per 16GB stick which is much more than normal memory and slower at 2666MT/s since 3200MT/s is hard to find, hard to locate on a QVL as compatible, and expensive).  As of a few generations ago a lot of motherboards were capped at 64GB max and many laptops at 32GB but if you have a brand new system the cap is likely either 128GB or 256GB and kits that go together can be found up to that amount and frankly even capping out your memory isn't that expensive compared to a few years ago. I paid $175 per stick for each of my 4 x 3200 C14 memory and now they can be found for like half that. Also, definitely go with a high density kit which leaves you some DIMM's open for expansion later if you're not maxing out.

[DanielNS84]

27 minutes ago, leclod said:

F... ! I'm at 13.8GB,

 

Edit : 2GB alone for the idle Epic Game Launcher, is this real ?

Close Firefox and down to 7.4GB

Chrome and Firefox use a ton of memory, especially if you use a lot of tabs...also, many applications hog memory but will free some up if needed by something else as they're just caching things they may need. It's hard to judge your needs based on numbers in task manager, it's usually better to calculate based on your regular usage using a list of things you know you run frequently.