How Much RAM Do Gamers Need? 16GB vs. 32GB vs. 64GB

[@JarrodsTech]

As much as they can download.

[@benperkins2929]

Based

[@stormcloaksoldier3484]

common Jarrod W

[@SleepDaemon]

69 likes, please keep that way

[@nathanddrews]

@@SleepDaemon It was already ruined by the time I got here, but my like made it 96.

[@SleepDaemon]

@@nathanddrews when I saw it was 69

[@Mildly_Amused]

What I noticed going from 32GB to 64GB was my video encoding times dropped significantly. The time required to encode a 10 minute 4K video dropped by over 30%.

[@Strahinja_Djordjevic]

Just the operating system will run smoother the more it has. On 8 gigs yoyr PC idle uses alnost 4. As soon as you drop in 16 or 32, even 64 the system will start using more and more idle because it really wants more but it knows it cannot take too much. So this logic works for most apps. Even games that run perfectly fine on 8 gig video cards and show 7.2 vram usage, you drop in a 16 gig card and the game will start using 11 gigs or similar, and this all happens on same in game settings. So yeah programs, games and even the OS are all coded to use what they got available to the best of their abilities.

[@nurmur4010]

​@@Strahinja_Djordjevicsadly my rtx 3050 laptop with only 4gb Vram can't open some heavy AAA games, it's not require enough Vram. But i used 32gb 16x2 of ram and its wayyyy more smooth compare to 16gb 2x8 which used before, and yeah more ram means the system will use more space.

[@maurice482390]

@@Strahinja_Djordjevic yep 64gb DDR5 and 20GB 7900xt and 7800X3D all using SAM as well. excellent always left with 15Gb of RAM left or more depending on my usage

[@pelle7771]

At this moment I have 32 GB of RAM, but my next system will have 64 GB. I do a lot of stuff at the same time, Firefox uses a ridiculous amount of memory and I think some of my favorite software has bad memory leaks. So I am running out of memory every few days and I have to reboot. And it will be a DDR5-System, so to double the RAM later on by adding an extra kit will be difficult. The 32 GB were good for 10 years now and the new PC should last another decade. ;-) And I think a lot of normal tasks like video encoding/recoding will run smoother with more RAM.

[@tirednsleepy44]

The only reason I bought 64gb was for ue5 and blender. Still unless I get some bottomless pockets the graphics card is going to be my hardest upgrade on a limited income. It’s taken forever to save for what I’ve got so far.lol.

[@KnightofAges]

"Or Chrome with two tabs open..." 🤣 That really hit the spot.

[@wtfronsson]

My Chrome uses about 4800mb when I have 2 windows and a total of less than 40 tabs. A lot of them are KZbin, so IDK if that makes them heavier than average. Resolution is 2560x1440, or 1080p on display 2.

[@ewitte12]

Chrome typically has more than 100 tabs open.

[@mgwach]

This really hit me in the feels.

[@thalo215]

Sad thing is my work pc crashed the other day when I opened a 4th chrome tab. Took over an hour to get it back running.

[@zephrizi9034]

Meh Firefox is sucking down 6 solid gigs of ram and there are only like 10 tabs open, I think it's just the nature of browsers these days.

[@ahettinger525]

"chrome with two tabs open" I would laugh, but I'm too busy crying.

[@Ironman-BB]

​@alargecorgi2199 what you do with this much tabs? 😂

[@adamricecracker7128]

@alargecorgi2199 but i guess they are not all active. i have probably more than that and i have ONLY 16 GBRAM i even have Tabs in Groups THe Top of my Browser is full of Groups that contain many Tabs. i don't understand why people say Chrome is slow because of Tabs, i have no issues. With Edge my system freezes if i have just 200Tabs open.

[@BluesFanUK_]

I legit have 1,700 tabs on Chrome open right now, 32GB RAM.

[@louisuhls9528]

@@BluesFanUK_ How do you even know which tab is which, or click on the right one? I thought my 80 open tabs was crazy.

[@seumelhoramigo6186]

:D

[@LooKingG00d]

I agree on the graphs. Very nice analysis video. Thanks Steve 😊

[@iikatinggangsengii2471]

it doesnt make sense, theyre clearly wrong things and shouldnt be done let alone normalized, i wouldnt want to accostumed in such environment and leave as soon as i get rich

[@reeeeeee6416]

2018 feels like a year ago, not like 5 year ago

[@Hardwareunboxed]

Agreed!

[@formulaic78]

You musta gone through a different pandemic to me!

[@dakoderii4221]

@@formulaic78 Plandemic

[@yc_030]

But its 6 years ago

[@Effect-Without-Cause]

2015 was 20 year ago Aware

[@stephendetomasi1701]

3:34 Steve is living in 3024 with his 64-channel RAM config

[@Hardwareunboxed]

🤣

[@inGameweTrusted]

​​@@Hardwareunboxed Boss try COD Warzone next time...20+ gb of ram using(((

[@randomestdragon]

​@@inGameweTrustedit's on the list at 15.8GB

[@mesaber86]

​@@randomestdragonmost games uses as much ram as available otherwise pagefile/hd

[@samiraperi467]

@@mesaber86 I can confidently tell you that you're wrong. I have 64GB and no game ever has used all of it. What you're telling me is that you don't have enough memory.

[@peanutnutter1]

12:42 Jump scare

[@samson7294]

I actually LOLd

[@brucethen]

I had to rewatch to see what you were referring too, I lol'd

[@InfiniteDarkMass]

Nice catch. )

[@IGIAISI]

that part was actually hilarious

[@EhNothing]

Current machine has 8GB DDR3 (i7 4770K). New machine will jump to 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30, which will be like coming up for air after being underwater a long time. Good video, thanks.

[@CookinBeatloaf]

8 to 16 is noticeable, 16 to 32 I didn't notice anything but I also stopped thinking about closing background apps, even before upgrading to an x3d

[@TheUnkow]

When I went from DDR2 4 GB to DDR4 16 GB there was a noticeable difference. The main one was that on the old one we had to care about minimalism, optimisation etc. Now we don't need to care as much, but if we implement some of those strategies, the new RAM works even better. Note that just having additional RAM, it does not mean all is gonna be faster. The CPU has to work to keep those apps up. So if you have bloat and using 10 out of 16, the person that has the same CPU and uses 4 of 8 will have a better experience and performanve even though they have 2GB less free RAM.

[@williehrmann]

I went with 16gb DDR3 already in 2012 with my 3770k. Now 64 gb DDR4 with 12700k

[@curtis.albrecht.79]

My i7-4790K is running 4x8GB (32GB total) of Corsair, DDR3, 2400Mhz.

[@dennisbradley5620]

i went from a 4590 i5 with 8gb DD3 and a GTX 1060, to a 12700 i7 with 16gb that i since upgraded to 32, and a RTX 4070. And its night and day. Dunno how i survived now with the old rig. But it served me well for years.

[@adheipkarkal8840]

“The last time we bothered was 2018” The change from 2018 to 2024 is massive and rightfully deserved! You give us geeks the best possible explanation and details on stuff that we have doubts about our are just curious to know more about! Great job to everyone at Hardware Unboxed and wishing you all much more for the years to come! Cheers 🍻

[@DrearierSpider1]

When I play Elden Ring, I'll often have a browser with an interactive map and/or podcast going. It's really nice to have 32GB to be able to not have to worry about RAM usage, the game uses 12GB to 13GB if just the game is running.

[@originalscreenname44]

I've been playing Elden Ring recently and with only things like Steam, MSI Afterburner, and Hardware Info in the background it still eats up 14.5 GB in certain areas.

[@sumansaha295]

The more ram you have the more is allocated by software. As they say free ram is waste.

[@MaxIronsThird]

Why have hardware info on while gaming, that easily eats around 5% of the CPU performance​@@originalscreenname44

[@MaxIronsThird]

​@@sumansaha295allocated =/ used

[@Vorsm]

​@@MaxIronsThirdallocated and usage aren't the same......

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

"How much ram do you need?" "..All of it!"

[@FcoEnriquePerez]

Lmfao... Really tho' this changes so quick. A few years "8gbs" was the "minimum" for a gamer, now should be 16 minimum, 32 just ideal and 64 to be safe with everything else, but that might change even quicker, specially with game devs caring less and less about optimizations, which ain't right anyway.

[@blueskull6789]

MB says max is 128gb Sooooooooooo.......

[@Ravenought69]

at least 48gb... but 64gb for future proofing.

[@dennisbradley5620]

Lol yep. when you think you have enough RAM, but more.

[@Etemuss]

Going from 16 to 32 arround the HG Legacy release was mindblowing. All my performance issues at that time was gone for 30€

[@AlexandreG]

Damn, that's a cheap ram stick bro.

[@CleonofAthens]

And Apple still thinks 8gb of ram ok in 2024.

[@Robo-xk4jm]

you say that as if anyone would get a mac for gaming

[@CleonofAthens]

@@Robo-xk4jm Imagine getting a new mac thinking it can run final cut. Then it cant run final cut.

[@_Cookie_Warrior_]

It is okay if you know what for will you use it

[@jonathanto99]

​@@_Cookie_Warrior_ Like buying a $1100 laptop for just web browsing and typing word documents? Because that's about what 8gb of ram can do nowadays

[@_Cookie_Warrior_]

@@jonathanto99 I know, but its peoples choise to buy it, apple is giving them options.

[@GregSalazar]

Super useful info! Have referred to this video multiple times already. Thanks, fellas!

[@ChiekoGamers]

Went from 16gb to 32gb, huge difference. I can play games while other software are running in the background without affecting 0.1% lows.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

And no RAM is lost, it works as disk cache. RAM disk is 1980s nonsense nowadays.

[@BlueDrew10]

@@Breakfast_of_Champions I don't think the video was recommending RAM disk, it was just using it to artificially limit RAM capacity.

[@lafalamirr10dede81]

And why the f*** you arę runnig other soft on background?

[@Motion_God]

@@lafalamirr10dede81he could be streaming or playing music anything like that

[@mickaelsflow6774]

​@@lafalamirr10dede81why the hell not? It's a PC, not a console. Infinite reasons to.

[@fraginz]

I have 16GB. Trust me, you need 32GB. Edit: ok, let me elaborate. If you play games with almost nothing else other than steam running on the background, 16GB would be enough. For me, I have other things running like steelseries app, msi afterburner, google drive, things like that. Those things consume small amount of RAM, but they add up. Most of the time I also have a single browser tab running. There are times in certain game (i.e Gates of Hell) which my game crashed because my PC is literally running out of memory, even when I close as many background app as I could. Of course, bad optimization also contributes to that. So if you want to game without ever worrying about running out of RAM in the middle of a game that you like, without the need of closing anything in the background, and plan to use your system longterm for future games, go for 32GB.

[@mastroitek]

Had 16gb till 3 months ago, it was mostly fine for my needs, but on newer titles (2020+) it was really stretching it with ram usage at >90%, with that said I still had a good gaming experience, so if you are happy with your 16gb there is no need to upgrade just now. But 32gb seems to be now mandatory for games coming in the near future and also for some other memory hungry programs

[@ZurOhki1]

I have 32 and I've seen Star Citizen eat all of it, and 8GB of swap, and then crash because it's out of memory.

[@zdspider6778]

I have 16GB. Trust me, you don't.

[@DanteLovesPizza]

"Trust me" without any details is like asking people to give you money without any reason.

[@damianich4824]

​@@ZurOhki1 sounds like a well-programmed game lmao

[@bitpushr]

11:20 "We can't find a single gaming example requiring that much memory" Escape From Tarkov is your answer. Specifically, on the Streets of Tarkov map. I've seen that push 28GB in the past.

[@BOT_Calvin]

It needs that much to simulate a working Anti-Cheat.

[@pogtuber5146]

Doesn't really matter, you barely feel the effects if you don't have 28gb available.

[@mttrashcan-bg1ro]

I have 96gb Ram and was playing Red Dead 2 yesterday and after a while I saw total system usage was at 28gb. Hogwarts legacy quite happily gets to around 28gb too. Obviously you can still play them fine with 32gb though, I'm curious to know how the compression effects things.

[@Tomiply]

Yeah, but if you have a lot of RAM, games will use more because more is available. It's not like they NEED it. For instance, when I had a GPU with 10GB VRAM, games would often use around 6-8GB VRAM, and they would run perfectly fine. Now I have a card with 24GB VRAM, and suddenly, those exact same games at the exact same resolution use 11GB VRAM and so on. In other words, the system will use more if it can, but it's not like it's going to make a difference always.

[@Seidmadur7]

Try Star Citizen, that game loves some free RAM

[@averageanne2969]

Another benefit I noticed is for long sessions of single player games (especially heavily modded ones) is a large drop in load times between instances you've already loaded before the RAM has to make space again. Older but still played titles like Skyrim will in theory, entirely fit on 32GB of RAM accounting for up to 18GB of mods.

[@akyhne]

My old Cities: Skylines maps easily ate 20 of my 24GB of ram. That was even with a mod that made sure, sprites of similar assets were only loaded once. When I upgraded my PC a year ago, I installed 64GB and the same maps ate up to 34 or 36GB. I of course need to say, I had a lot of mods and custom assets installed, but that's kind of the situation for anyone playing C:S on a serious level. Oh, and if you wanna ask why on earth I only had 24GB on the old system, it was because I originally built it with 16GB, around 2013, but when I wanted to upgrade around 2016, that was when prices on ram skyrocketed. 8GB was like DKK 1000 or $140. It was actually insane. A year ago, I only paid DKK 1800 for 64GB DDR5.

[@TechRodent]

I use 64GB of ram but of course I use my computer mainly for work. It's overkill for just gaming but when you need to work on client projects and have Unity, Unreal, Rider or Visual Studio, Blender and Photoshop at the same time, that amount of ram just makes sense.

[@antman9501]

Thanks for explaining that on a "ram for gaming" video!

[@FelipeOliveir4]

Java Development 😂😂😂

[@privacyisdead-i5m]

thats not overkill....thats futureproof

[@Trojanpige]

@@antman9501 As someone who uses his PC both for work and gaming, I find his comment insightful. Though 64GB might be overkill even for work 😂

[@Req077]

Exactly, during work I push 20gb+ and occassionally max out my 32gb so decided to add another 32gb considering I also play during lunch etc.

[@Simon_Denmark]

48 GB kits exist too if you need memory between 32 GB and 64 GB.

[@weltsiebenhundert]

It's sth with speed and dual rank.

[@MrSherhi]

Stupidly expensive in my country.

[@axescar]

And even more, there is some 24GB kits. If price is OK, its a nice entry level amount of RAM

[@alexmihai22]

1X16GB + 2x 8GB. Right. I recommended 2x 4GB + 2x 2GB about ten years ago for a better performance than with 8GB and still cheaper than 16GB. For DDR2 2x 2GB + 2x 1GB was still acceptable at one point, to get over the minimum 4GB.

[@ItsHatlolOfficial]

@@axescar 24gb is entry level?

[@rangersmith4652]

In November 2022 I built a 13700K system for gaming and production with a then very expensive 64GB kit of 5600 CL36 RAM. Turns out I almost never did any heavy production tasks on that machine, so in January 2024 I replaced the two 32GB sticks with a now much less expensive 32GB kit of 6400 CL32 RAM, and gaming performance improved a measurable and sometimes mildly perceivable amount. I'll use that slower 64GB kit in a dedicated production machine later this year, but I could have saved some cash by buying that 64GB kit in 2024 instead of 2022. Live and learn.

[@Solrac-Siul]

intel scales quite decently with ram speed so it is not a surprise that your gaming performance improved. If you had 7200 memory you would also notice visible improvement even moving from 6400, and going with even faster ram continues to give improvements up to 8000 or so, specially in terms of low 1% frames. After that i guess one enters in the realm of hardly noticeable diminutive returns .

[@jakehutchens]

You can run 64GB @ 6400CL28 just fine.. This has more to do with the fact that you went from 5600CL36 slow Samsung/Micron chips, to 6400CL32 fast SKHynix. The actual capacity had nothing to do with it. And to be technical if both 32GB and 64GB kits were both at 6400CL28, the 64GB kit will be faster because it will have lower latency. The sweet spot is 48GB SKHynix new M-die. 6400-8400 are all the same chips, adjust timings and voltage. Thumbs down on your comment for not understanding what you're talking about, and as a result spreading misinformation. Nothing personal, this video is not any better.

[@rangersmith4652]

@@jakehutchens I know capacity had nothing to do with it. My comment was meant to convey agreement that 64GB is not needed for gaming and to note that for a gaming system, as long as you have enough RAM, it's better to go faster than to go higher capacity. Thumbs down on your comment for completely misinterpreting my comment and for being uppity.

[@Night_Hawk_475]

I went all the way up to 64 on my last build.... necessary? no, not at all. But I really do appreciate that I can pause my single player game, tab out, open a multiplayer game with friends and queue up for a match, then keep playing my single player game during queue. All while leaving my absurd chrome-tab-count windows open too. I don't have to worry about closing out of anything before I open another program/game. It really is more about multitasking than about single-game performance. I can be streaming netflix on one monitor, playing a game on another, recording my gameplay with obs, and still leave my current chrome session open along with another game (or two) paused in the background. That said - one of the much better options really is probably to just buy 16 or 32 to start with, and then a year or so later, you can buy another set of ram to fill your other two slots and double your capacity if you find that you actually are having to go close out of windows/applications before starting up your favorite games. If it's not an issue then just keep going with your original amount.

[@wasitacatisaw83]

I have 64GB of DDR5 paired with a 7950X3D and RTX4090. I multibox several Eve Online clients at the same time, and also screen record with Shadowplay. I always have Discord open, and usually watch KZbin or Twitch or a film in VLC, and use many many chrome tabs. As it wasn't a budget build, I figured better to have and not need, rather than need and not have.

[@DrManany]

I have the same build … what type of ram d u have ?

[@wasitacatisaw83]

@@DrManany 2x 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 30-36-36-96

[@segasov]

@@wasitacatisaw83nice build sir I have the same thing, does it matter to have 2x32 or 4x16? I currently have 2x 16 gb 5400hz dominator expo (had to have it pretty)

[@wasitacatisaw83]

@@segasov the memory controller on Ryzen CPUs can't handle 4 sticks of ram. If you want 64, you have to do 2x32, not 4x16

[@Quessir]

I thought I'd be okay for years on 32GB. Then Lightroom started slowing to a crawl and checking the system usage it was using 19.5GB while editing. I wasn't even doing anything too strenuous. For gaming alone 32GB is fine but even light editing in Lightroom has disabused me of that notion. And at the time I was using a crop sensor camera, I was intending on moving to a full frame camera with double the megapixel rating and that scared me into moving to 64GB.

[@mastroitek]

Doing astrophotography I even seen Photoshop eating up 14GB ram while editing a SINGLE image 😂. If I take some photos on family trips and I want to edit them in lightroom it's always fun to check the ram usage graph in task manager going up untill there is nothing left 😂

[@jeroenvdw]

@@mastroitek Sometimes I'm doing focus stacks with about 100 raw photo's, it's the reason I bought 128GB ram

[@mastroitek]

@@jeroenvdw wow! I once was foolish enough that I believed my old 8gb laptop could stack 8 images, did not go as expected...

[@Trojanpige]

Which version of Lightroom do you have?

[@JETFOURLITRE]

DCS World, in a heavily saturated MP setting will suck up over 50GB of RAM.

[@sodapopinksi667]

That's wild

[@LuccianoNova]

Does Nvidia Frame gen/DLSS reduce any RAM usage?

[@noticing33]

Lol wtf

[@squid11160]

​@@LuccianoNovano

[@XiaOmegaX]

If you're playing DCS on a server with a ton of 3rd party mods enabled, and you're recording for replay/tacview later, you can breach over 128gb usage. I've seen some players cite a need to get 192gb ddr5 kits.

[@dopespillcomics]

Great video Steve! I agree. I don’t think the extra charts were needed for this one. I’m running 64gb of RAM, with heavy usage the most I’ve seen it go up to is slightly above 32gb (if I leave Premiere and Photoshop open while hopping into a quick game).. I run dual monitors with a ton of Rainmeter widgets and I’ve learned with time that the extra headroom helps. I look at this much like the conversation of using an Ultrawide monitor and needing to go for a GPU that’s capable of pushing 4K. I usually have to account for the overhead but most people with a single display and no extra background apps don’t really need it. Keep up the great work!

[@kevinamery5922]

Depending on what size video or images you're working on, Premiere or Photoshop could consume 64 GB all on their own, so for your use case having that much RAM makes perfect sense.

[@CmndaPnda]

Great video and a refreshing change from frame rate comparisons! I'm on the little CPU that could (Ryzen 3600) with 32GB (2 x 16GB) Viper Steel 3600mhz.

[@tapioorankiaalto2457]

This was a good format for this topic. No need for dozens of bar graphs. I'm rocking 32 (16x2) gigs of DDR5 in my new PC and 16 (4x4) gigs of DDR3 in my older PC.

[@Dellphox]

I have 4x8GB sticks of 3600MT/s with my 5800X3D, I feel like by the time I'll need more RAM, it'll be time to upgrade my platform as well.

[@Terracronz]

Same setup, I figure if I pair that with a 4070ti super or equivalent I’ll be good for a while

[@noticing33]

💯

[@sopcannon]

@@Terracronz same but 4070 non tie

[@samsonite187]

Is there a performance increase from 16? Might go get some tonight. Same cpu.

[@CoreyKearney]

@@samsonite187 Depends on what your after. 4x8 is going to have a higher latency, and makes overclocking more difficult. But if you touch the page file even semi regularly it's worth it for the better frame times, and general smooth OS operation.

[@7rich79]

One thing to bear in mind is that expanding memory later may not always be straightforward. For example, in some of my builds, I've noticed that going from two sticks to four sticks requires lowering some timings or bandwidth to run stable, either because the motherboard doesn't like four sticks or that two ram kits of the same SKU still showed minor differences in actual use. You can replace your memory kit to a higher capacity, but it feels a bit wasteful to have leftover memory sticks 😅

[@garydterhune8392]

I generally give my extra sticks of ram to someone else. Even if they have to lower timings it is still FREE performance if it costs them nothing.

[@MiriadCalibrumAstar]

12:41 that got me, hahahaha

[@Coolfaceable]

This look is called "Magnum" in tech journalism circles

[@anonamouse5917]

Good points. Now if the memory companies can just plainly state if their kits are dual or single rank would help a ton. I called GSkill to ask if a certain memory kit was single or dual rank and THEY DIDN'T KNOW.

[@cmdrTremyss]

a customer support guy doesn't know everything about all the products his company makes? oh the audacity!

[@MrSmitheroons]

Good call on the format of the video! The time saved on bajillions of benchmarks that wouldn't paint a very clear picture, was spent explaining implications for real PC use-cases, and giving due emphasis to the few graphs and benchmarks that pretty well demonstrate the point. As for my machine: I intended to get 16GB, but I realized at the last moment the bundle I was picking up had the 16GB as one stick. So I had to pay for a second stick. I'm not too unhappy with 32GB, it's never not enough, and there's a certain "charmed life" aspect to that not needing to worry about it. I also enjoy gaming on a 3200G with 16GB of DDR4. It's enjoying the games that matters the most, really. I think 16GB is enough, 32GB will really do it those rare times. It's paying a premium to just never have to worry about it, basically. For those who can afford it, go for it. If your budget is tight, don't feel you're missing out on a ton though, it doesn't appear to make a difference that often according to the video. If stuttering, maybe dial down textures one setting or close some browser tabs and let 'er rip.

[@fronell]

My current PC has 16GB and I've decided to go with 64GB for the new one I'm building out. Its not so much games requiring more memory but the amount of applications I have running in the background, especially the amount of tabs I like to have open in Chrome. I thought about going with 32GB initially and going to 64GB when I need it, but there's some risk with doing that. With RAM, you want to stick with the same exact modules and there's a risk the original 32GB I buy may not be available to buy anymore when it's time to upgrade to 64GB. Stability can also be an issue, especially with overclocking, when running 4 RAM sticks instead of 2. Buying a new set of 2x32GB sticks could be cheaper in the future overall, but who knows what pricing will actually be. For me, going with 64GB now is worth avoiding any possible hassle that may come with upgrading the RAM in the future.

[@arthurcuesta6041]

Unless you want to do extreme overclocks, having the same kit doesn't really matter. Binning only affects high frequency/low timings.

[@noisytwit]

32gb would be enough for me if it were not for flight sims, Digital Combat Simulator (dcs) chews through 32 well into the high 40gb/low 50gb in minutes! MSFS, whilst not as bad as DCS does also use up 32gb quick with addons!

[@evers6214]

But does performance actually tank or is it not a big deal to use the system swap file?

[@vertigo2893]

@@evers6214 It can stutter pretty badly. It depends enormously what map, what plane and if you fly offline or on a server. You can play DCS with 16, but 64GB is definitely not overkill for DCS with some planes/maps, especially online. Its also the only reason I have 64GB in mine, otherwise I think 16GB would be enough.

[@noisytwit]

@@evers6214 as vertigo says yes it can well do. Especially for people using VR instead of pancake mode. I saw a reasonable uplift of performance going to 64gb in terms of micro stutters, especially in high asset population missions spanning thousands of sq miles.

[@Njazmo]

@@noisytwit VR is just 2 pancakes, with motion sensors. I also have VR glasses, but I don't have to prove people, that the earth is round. It's like humiliating people using monitors, and you are way superior human being, because you ate all your pancakes, and now you have discovered bacon and eggs!

[@ScruffyMisguidedAndBlue]

Star Citizen uses the vast bulk of 32Gb on its own, if you have other stuff in the background, it is beneficial to have 64GB.

[@john066]

Great video. I’m currently running 16 GB of DDR for 3800 MHz with my 5800x3D and RTX 4090. Thought about upgrading to 32 GB as I won’t be doing a system overhaul for another few years probably not until AM6. This video tells me I probably should considering are just going to use more and more for the next few years. Thank you.

[@PaintsAreOp]

You should definitely get more ram, especially if you like to have discord or web browser open while gaming.

[@bluej511]

You should upgrade your platform too to get full potential, a 5800x3d holds back a 4090. Pretty sure Steve just did a video on it. Save up instead of adding more ram.

[@PaintsAreOp]

@@bluej511 It all depends on what game you're playing and at what resolution. Something is always the bottleneck unless your GPU and CPU are both at 100%. 5800x3d is still one of the best gaming CPUs out there, even beating the 7000-series non-x3d CPUs.

[@john066]

I don’t run any background tasks when gaming. I just game. I’m old school lol. I generally play single player games at max setting on 1440p ultrawide. Currently replaying Witcher 3 next gen. Looking forward to stalker 2 in sept. If my 5800x3D bottlenecks the 4090 I don’t think it’s by much as my GPU usage is typically 95-99%, but it might a little at times. Do you have a link to that video? I think I missed that one.

[@bluej511]

@@john066 forgot where it was but a 7800x3d gets more fps then a 5800x3d with a 4090. Again, you won't notice 150 fps compared to 180 lol.

[@K4g4m1]

You did a great job with this video. Answered all my questions about how much memory capacity I should go for from a gaming/value perspective and what benefit I might get from going a tier higher if I felt inclined to overpay. I'm giving feedback because you asked for it specifically.

[@saphyre-l4w]

I had one stick of 32GB DDR5. After I learned that single channel is a no-no, I put another 32 GB stick there and the whole PC got much quicker (especially booting). Who would have thought. 😆

[@bluej511]

You were essentially running at half your ram speed. The speed on a ram kit is for dual channel even if you buy one stick, it's a bit deceiving.

[@ThunderingRoar]

surprised they even sell single ram sticks in the current year

[@GameBacardi]

...this setup has been recommended past +15 years. Use two DDR RAM sticks

[@Brokegamerboii]

​@@bluej511ddr5 is already dual channel for each module

[@zuckdaddy1596]

@@bluej511you're kind of right in a way, but not for the reason you think lol

[@l3v1ckUK]

I find it unceptable that some mid range laptops stil come with only 8GB. My work laptop only has 8GB and it's pretty much used as soon as all the company mandated background apps have finished loading at startup. 16GB should be the minimum for anything, let alone gaming. On my current gaming laptop (Zephyrus M16 2023) I specifically went for a 32GB model as I don't expect 16GB to be the minimum forever. I'm glad I did, based on your graphs, as I enjoy playing hogwarts legacy.

[@TheCth777]

My work laptop has 32gb of ram and is still a laggy slow piece of shit swapping between or opening programs

[@TrevorM1992]

16 is plenty for me. I game at 1080p and use a mix of medium/high settings and I don't have background stuff open, I just game and that's it.

[@BW022]

It does depends what else you have going on. Remember that OS itself uses RAM to smooth out things and many common apps use bucket loads of RAM. Leave a browser open to a few KZbin tabs, open a few Word documents, etc. and suddenly one of those can start your game to start using virtual memory. Maybe less so a 1080p, but happens.

[@TheCth777]

Yeah this video just emphasizes that 80% or more of gamers are still fine at 16gb

[@devildante9]

@@TheCth777 I don't know man, it's not like a couple of DDR5 16GB 5600Ghz is several hundred dollars, it's like less than a hundred to upgrade to 32GB. The convenience of NOT having to close all my shit in order to open a game is totally worth it, that RAM will last you like 5 years anyways. I say this as someone that spent the last 10 years doing that.

[@TheCth777]

@@devildante9 I mean, you’re not wrong in that it’s nice to have and not that expensive. It’s still not necessary. Most people aren’t gaming with tons of other stuff open to begin with

[@devildante9]

@@TheCth777 If we go by that, sleeping in a bed is only nice and not necessary, the floor with a bedsheet is enough. If someone is using a computer for gaming, I would think that they would care about the performance at least a bit, and upgrading from 16 to 32, and from 4800 to 5600 or 6000, IS going to make a difference. It just makes no sense to me to not do it, and I live in south america where we make peanuts for money, and even then I don't find the cost expensive at all.

[@RajSharma14]

awesome video… perfect imo! clear, concise and to the point without beating around the bush. Appreciate it. thnks!

[@nimkal]

Oh wow! I had no idea when the GPU VRAM runs out it can borrow from your Memory RAM instead. Insane. This gives another strong point towards getting the 32GB as opposed to 16GB. Thanks a lot for this!

[@thecasualgamer1457]

I'm running 32GB, and is lacking. Having left "normal" gaming for flight sims and DCS in particular... I'm only watching this to learn more about RAM. And it's good. But I wish there were more testing on simulation type games like MSFS, DCS, War Thunder, milsims and so on with a lot of AI units and munitions calculations etc. Testing with a "standard" HOTAS setup and face/IR tracking with the relevant background software running... it would be really really interesting. Difficult to set up, but even as the sim equipment often costs more than a 4090/7800x3D rig, it is still a quite big and persistant customer base. And I believe the results would be interesting also for pure hardware "research"

[@JesseDeya]

So..... @2:00 It depends?

[@IlMemetor72]

The more you buy the more you save Helped me so much 😊

[@nintenster]

I love how you covered the history, cuz thats exactly what was going through my head "future proofing"

[@chrisgarner5765]

This is why I built a 96 core Genoa for doing LLM models. 12 channels of memory bandwidth and 192 threads for running gguf LLMs (can find on eBay with motherboard used for about same price as a 4090) and can handle up to 6TB of ram or like me get the cheep 32gb sticks x12 = 384GB of ram at 12x ddr5 bandwidth! 460.8 GB/s per socket cheers

[@drizz786]

Thanks for the update, looking to do a ground up build next year so all good info. Fyi Star Citizen is a ram monster so I'll be looking to go from 32 ar least 64 , hoping 9000 use faster ram .... Great coverage on computer too keep up the good work thanks for your time and effort.

[@Cromern123]

64 Really helps with that game. Highly recommended if you can

[@rumblerina]

I downloaded a huge asset pack for Cities Skylines 1 and it ate over 32GB alone. 64GB is ok if you want to play heavily modded games. Running 64GB DDR5 6400 C32 in my 7800x3d/4090 system, mostly use it for gaming and programming, which sometimes eats over 32, so yeah

[@RomanRdv]

Yeah exactly, people are always forgetting that there are strategy and economic games out there that are very scalable and they have completely different loads on CPU and RAM compared to mainstream stuff.

[@AirGunWeb]

Hey there. I tend to build all my "general use" systems around 32GB of ram. For my workstation-related systems, i.e., content creation and work-related, I would like to have 64GB for the headroom. When hitting photoshop hard, I'll see usage go way above 32GB. So if I'm building a gaming PC, 32 is really good. If it's going to be a mixed use case with Adobe apps with a side of gaming, then 64 is my go-to. Cheers Rick

[@Trojanpige]

What GPU & RAM would you recommend for video editing? I've notice that my GTX 1660 is getting hotter and slower when rendering 1080p videos.

[@computerstuff4576]

just bought a 64 gb kit to replace my 16gb, since multiple games were using all 15.8 gigs of it. this video really helped! just earned yourself a new subscriber!

[@sidey310]

This was a very good approach, and i believe you ended up coming to a more accurate conclusion with less benchmark grinds. Thank you.

[@sicmic]

Been running 64GB for quite some time. I don't need that much. But I'd rather just have it and not worry about having a deficiency, as well as not needing to upgrade if/when 32GB isn't enough.

[@CloudyMcCloud00]

But by that time you'll need to upgrade your entire PC, and then your old and incompatible 64GB will have to stay in your old PC -- doing nothing.

[@cluckendip]

Exactly as said above. As this video shows, by the time you DO need 64gb of ram to play games, it will likely be more affordable and faster, so there's no point in spending the extra money these days if you don't actually need it.

[@Morrodin-WH40K]

Yeah, I bought a new PC just this month and went with 64GB as well. Is it needed? As shown, not at all really unless you have A LOT of stuff running in the background but it virtually costs nothing extra, so I figured: Why not ;)

[@BW022]

@@cluckendip Not just games. If you suddenly find you want to do 4k video encoding or complex web development with a local SQL server and an VM running... well... if you can make the business case for buying another 32GB of RAM (or 64GB because your slots), you can probably make the case for another PC designed for that tasks -- larger SSDs, more cores, etc.

[@cluckendip]

@@BW022 That's a different argument for those who do need the extra VRAM for that reason, which you're right about. This video is about gaming. The extra VRAM doesn't hurt, but for gamers, it doesn't make enough of a benefit either.

[@andreycamper5863]

From the games i have played: Minecraft, BeamngDrive, Starcitizen also eat 16+GB.

[@StaceyJensenn]

what a shitty games selection

[@arthurcutter8168]

Oh absolutely. I regularly see Star Citizen alone using 22Gb of memory when playing.

[@magnusenamd]

Yes and PS6 will get maby 32gb ram.

[@watermelonbanana1772]

​@@StaceyJensennyou have smegma on your shaft🤣

[@FloatSamplesGT710]

Minecraft!! Seriously.. I've never seen it takes more than 8gb

[@ElNeroDiablo]

Running 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4-3600 with a R9-5900X and RX 6900XT as a Gaming, Streaming & Editing multi-purpose rig, recently rebuilt from Win11 to Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 after being fed up with Win11 shenanigans and not regretting the change one bit so far. Yes; 64GB is overkill for pure-gaming, and to an extent gaming and streaming, but it provides enough legroom for me to have things processing in the background on otherwise unused cores the game and stream aren't commanding, and plenty of legroom for my editing and video rendering to spread out over.

[@flimermithrandir]

Do you use Process Lasso too to lock the Cores for the Game and Stream or do you just let zhe System do it automatically?

[@_Quint_]

What headroom are you making use of then, what additional tasks are you running? Or am I just reading cope?

[@Brent_P]

Every application runs better with 64GB of RAM.

[@Petephoenix]

Nice. With 64GB it doesn't matter but Cinnamon desktop would idle at 1GB or under whereas Windows can use 3-4GB+ right after login.

[@НААТ]

​@@Petephoenixdebloated windows is around 1.8/1.9gb.

[@makaveli158]

love the background task section, we need more of this

[@lsik231l]

I decided on a 48 GB kit (24GB x2, 6400 MT/s CL 32) for my latest build. Largest kit you can buy that's still single rank. So, imo, it is the best combination of speed and capacity. The reason was to future proof as much as possible and be completely covered for heavily modified games/having other things open in the background without worries. Also, it's a bit unique.

[@TimberWulfIsHere]

You are running 2 sticks, you quite literally are in duel rank mode.

[@TimberWulfIsHere]

@@JohnDoe-ip3oq whoops, got my terms mixed up lmao.

[@1SaG]

About the whole "adding another 16 GB" ... that's what I tried to do with my 2x8 GB Corsair DDR4 3600 kit. Bought another exact same kit, threw it into my motherboard ... and started to get stability issues. Windows reliability-report was chock full of red warning icons. Took me a while to figure out and/or to acknowledge that it was probably the RAM upgrade that was to blame - or possibly that it was me since that particular kit (although highly popular/common) wasn't, and IIRC still isn't, on the compatible RAM list from MSI for this board. So I went and bit the bullet, bought a "certified" 2x16 GB kit from G-Skill (one that *is* listed as compatible) and the problems instantly went away. Of course, now I'm stuck with two 2x8 GB Corsair kits that I have no more use for. My point being: If you plan on going, say, 32 GB "down the road", you might as well just buy that much right now and get a matching 32 GB kit. Might save you some headaches and added cost in the future.

[@chavedaffee520]

Valuable experience shared

[@crunchyblade6829]

Thanks. I was going to do the same thing

[@Vlad-jy9ls]

And memory controllers don't like to run 4 dimm ddr5 configurations

[@AlexanderNecheff]

What motherboard do you have? ASUS boards with OptiMem (seems like >= TUF these days) tend to be able to handle a little more abuse out of the box. I don't build with MSI too often, but I would be surprised if they did not have a competing technology. If you are using XMP, sometimes you have to turn it off, go through a reboot, then turn it back on as the new kit won't like the old kit's XMP profile or the motherboard may have applied additional tuning. Or, you can try manually adjusting the memory timings, maybe a little looser if you still have stability issues. It is way more work, but you do have a good chance of getting mixed-matched kits to work, even on boards with less features. Sometimes you have to compromise on performance though as a more budget board may not have enough shielding on the traces.

[@DerEwigeWanderer]

Try Anno 1800 with a save file thats in the range of 500-1000 hours. Trust me, you NEED 64 GB! :D

[@dangerwr]

Cities Skylines is like that, as well. Most city builders can heavily inflate the larger you build and expand.

[@valentinardemon]

Flight simulator 2020 can use 64 or even 128GB, but it's a niche game. Like Anno, Cities Skyline or even some assetto corsa with mods. So depending on the game 64GB is not that overkill

[@marcm.]

Anno 1800, Stellaris especially with certain mods, a couple of resource management Sims that I have, flight simulator, and half of paradox games actually... Yeah 64 is really nice to have

[@Im_Behind_You]

Video references a link in the description explaining the difference in single/dual/quad rank memory modules but it's not there

[@webx135]

Keep in mind, many engines these days use some sort of data streaming. They often just use as much RAM as you will give them and just use it as a larger cache to reduce stutter.

[@carpathus]

Tinkered together a new machine last year. Got a 32 gig kit of brand new name brand ddr 4 for $59. Job done. Cheers!

[@TomySpark87]

That upside-down front panel 3:53 😢

[@MSJChem]

It's because Steve lives in Australia.

[@zdspider6778]

That's how they roll in Upside-down Land.

[@PixelShade]

If you don't have the money or even the capability to upgrade your RAM (some old motherboards have a 16GB limit) I can recommend running a light weight Linux distribution instead of Windows. Manjaro with the Gnome desktop environment uses ~850MB of RAM instead of 4GB, and if you go with the XFCE desktop environment you actually go down as low as ~500MB. It's worth a try in my opinion. Proton has matured immensely and I honestly have better luck running games in Linux compared to Windows these days. (except those where the publishers haven't activated anti-cheat runtime for Linux).

[@Redmage913]

Plus, you can “download more RAM” by installing zram-tools and configuring it :D

[@jas0x139]

Hogwarts is a good example of a Linux win. Currently people are crashing on Windows, but it's smooth on my system with no crashes. Also the game only uses around 5.4GB ram, everything on Ultra @3440x1440. You can also do some nerdy stuff like cache all of a games files and it will load everything from RAM instead of SSD/HDD. So you can take the slowest HDD and cache all the files(with vmtouch) and it will run as if on the fastest SSD.

[@PixelShade]

@@jas0x139 Definitely. And on my laptop which has an older Ryzen 2500U APU (using shared DDR4 as VRAM), I get much less memory bandwidth bottlenecked and can reach far higher framerates in Linux. :)

[@FloatSamplesGT710]

It's for non gamers

[@kingeling]

3:36 YOU DID WHAT

[@OutrunCid]

The Jenga version we never knew we needed.

[@ShadowVonChadwick]

For a few years, I happily ran topline 16 GB of "G-Skill F4-3200C14-8GFX x2" on a AX370-Gaming K7. A year or two ago, one of my sons sent me his redundant 16GB of a matching kit. Though It took a bit of work to get all 4 sticks running @ CL14, 3200MHz on reasonable volts. So I have been a happy gamer and general heavy tab user for a while now & have only just started thinking/planning of an upgrade. Mainly for more M.2 and a generation jump of CPU once prices settle. Sticking with AMD. Have been a HU fan for many years, love your no nonsense style & well edit, reliable videos. 👍

[@Oktokolo]

Speaking about boatloads of benchmarks: Please consider testing the impact of RAM size, speed and rimings on games that actually are likely to be RAM bound too. As an example, megabasing in Factorio is a great example of a good benchmark for combined CPU and RAM performance. And for the more mainstream games, a great benefit of playing on PC is the ability to use mod packs. So testing with and without the most popular massive mod pack might give players a better picture of how the hardware impacts modability of such games.

[@bluej511]

Don't you guys download it when you need more? Lol

[@EarthIsFlat456]

Overused joke, try something different next time.

[@El_Deen]

@@EarthIsFlat456 Cry me a river

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

Nah I hack it from bios to enable the secret ram on mobo. I'd told you how you can too but then it wouldn't be a secret lol. No internet connection needed

[@spaceowl9246]

@@EarthIsFlat456 It's not a joke though, I download RAM all the time. Give it a try.

[@EarthIsFlat456]

​@@El_Deen I'm sorry I hurt your feeling.

[@MegaOZX]

32GB RAM is the sweet spot now.

[@TheCth777]

*ignores video, comments on video anyway*

[@Neopulse00]

12:40 - LOL at the reflection face ya made 🤣

[@organiccrack516]

I think it'd be interesting to include a section with the background tasks in regular videos every now and again, especially for lower end/lower core count CPUs. If you have a 14900k, yeah, all the background tasks you want and then some will run fine, but the same can't be said when you don't have the same horsepower/thread count

[@Interlink98]

Great video. Helped me out with deciding how much I needed for my system.

[@richardhunter9779]

Extra RAM is used as filesystem cache. It would be interesting to see how it would affect load times between areas, in an large, open-world game such as Elden Ring. It is also interesting to me that many people spec their PCs just for the one task. Seriously, you don't do any other heavy stuff on your PC? Do you turn off hardware acceleration in the browser too, to avoid wear on the graphics card? To me, a PC is a powerful machine that should be capable of everything and the thought of a gaming-specific one is ridiculous.

[@andersjjensen]

The vast majority of people don't do much else with their PC than using a web browser, Word and Excel for household purposes and maybe a bit of photo editing or light video editing. For those tasks a gaming capable computer is already overkill. My own personal need is software development first and foremost, so I need all the cores I can get and all the RAM I the artificial limit of the consumer platform will allow. The GPU us just for fun, as anything graphics related is relegated to my wife who's a pro in that field. That said: I can't help but poke at bit at you last statement, as a good gaming computer is capable of everything. Like, what would you change on a high end gaming build to make it "more capable of everything"?

[@CurvedSlightly]

48GB. there, I said it.

[@The_Mup]

Jayztwocents had a video recently where he claimed that 16GB was more than anyone will ever need for gaming. Obviously he's wrong about that.

[@MikrRice]

Another great video! It'd be great to know the baseline/background/system RAM usage so we can more easily compare with our system's background tasks.

[@Larwood.]

I do agree with the overall approach of the testing, but I think it would have made sense to test a few more of the games with restricted memory. We've seen with VRAM that different games handle memory limitations differently, some are absolutely crippled.

[@felixwei7]

Looking forward to a new video talking about the CASlatency and gaming performance as well.

[@nutellaguyau]

Unless you are on a super small budget, the price of ram is cheap enough that 32gb should be the current standard.

[@mynickisalreadytaken]

Oh no. At 12:44 you can see that the Phantom of unboxed Hardware is haunting Steve and Tim. I am so sorry.

[@Ernismeister]

Test VRChat next time, in a populous instance.

[@stupidhinoto]

With 20GB RAM and memory swap off, I got out of memories so much. Everyone avatars is just horible optimize LOL. My avatar only 526 polygons and 128*128 single texture with Android comparible shader.

[@JacenLP]

One of the best videos about this topic! Excellent work!

[@BlissBatch]

Running a game with hundreds of mods active at once can easily use more than 32GB.

[@phillipcoetzer8186]

Need 32 want 64 Desire 128

[@NFGUN1T]

*Thumbnail: Wolveram*

[@PiotrBarcz]

As someone who's been buying cables and really anything in that wheelhouse from UGreen for over 7 years I can say their build quality design, functional quality, etc. are all phenomenal. Highly recommend them XD

[@BudgetBoat]

I've been running G.Skill Fortis 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-2400MHz CL16 For 7yrs now. Updated the MOBO & CPU recently using old RAM and GTX 1080Ti Lightning Z, still kicking good FPS.

[@BreckThePanther]

I just went with 64 GB for my new 7800x3d/ RTX 4080 super build. I'm planning on doing a custom loop by Christmas and the RAM was only like $45 more. I figure I have a great gaming machine and won't need to think about it for the next couple years.

[@geoff-h7c]

Ryzen 9 5950X with 32GB (FCLK 1900 MHz) user. Not feeling limited with programming, gaming and video encoding on this platform. I’m planning to move to hypothetically Ryzen 9 9950X3D. 64GB seems too much, more interested in 48GB and maybe (let’s dream about manufacturers being ready on time) in CAMM2 modules.

[@asamson23]

I have been running 32 GB on my desktops since at least 2018 and recently I started to put 32 GB on a few of my laptops with upgradable DDR4 memory. It's so nice to not have to think twice about hitting the pagefile and slowing down the entire machine with a lack of memory.

[@bartbroekhuizen5617]

You might want to try DCS World, its known for its huge ram usage because of the maps and terrain and many modules. I used 32 GB's but switched to 64 GB's which resulted in lower spikes. Also NVME 2 Drive of 1TB is recommended. Still good to see DCS World is still an edge case.

[@vasiovasio]

3:34 Man, just Thank You for this RAM Tower! 😍😍😍

[@scottcondie1363]

I like how compared to your other videos a casual 30 games at 20mins each isn't a benchmark marathon

[@alenmilic1296]

Good video, i think the value here is the low VRAM and low system ram effects. Some game might boot up but fail to load the level if total memory is exceeded. (my experience in Assetto Corsa)

[@bythelee]

Very sensible way to determine what RAM is necessary. Denying use of the same RAM via a ram drive is a clever way of varying the available amount of "exact same ram". Better investment to buy the best quality RAM in the amount wanted, than going for greater quantity and lesser quality (and/or slower timings). But the one question left hanging, is whether we'd be better off using 4 x 8GB sticks (quad channel, maybe?), or 2 x 16Gb kits to make up that 32Gb. I'm assuming one stick of 32Gb, forcing single channel, won't be the winner here. I tend to have a LOT of background tasks active, and have noticed sluggish transition even with the 2x16Gb I have installed today. So, early planning of an upgrade from AM4 to AM5 late this year or early 2025, I plan to get to 64Gb. But the 4 x 16Gb versus 2 x 32Gb question remains. And even the "new" middle option of 48Gb is looming large...

[@AngelCPUDD]

This is a good video. Essentially with RAM capacity you need to make sure you never run out of it. So what you did in this video, analyze RAM usage of an app, is appropriate.

[@jasonroberts8416]

I like this approach on testing RAM requirements, Thanks for the video.

[@roadwarrior6555]

Yep, good video. I never really thought about ranks until recently. Now that I have 4 single sided sticks I think this is dual rank? 4 sticks of 8 GB DDR4.