16GB of RAM - is it that bad? (/for me)

[Shrek]

I was looking for an excuse to get more than 16GB; didn't find one.

 

[Ruru]

I was looking for an excuse to get more than 16GB; didn't find one.

I have currently 48GB as I don't have an another DDR4 rig. Should get a cheap replacement board for that malfunctioning Z170 one so I put its RAM to my main rig for while.

 

[dirtyferret]

I was looking for an excuse to get more than 16GB; didn't find one.

DDR4 RAM was on sale during the holidays so cost was minimal at the time

 

[Princess Garnet]

Only one person can ever answer this question, and that is yourself. Nobody else has access to, or awareness of, your uses.

There is no truly objective "xx GB is or isn't enough" because it is entirely dependent on the level of demand you place on it. We can make generalizations, and those have some value. For example, capacities measured in MB would not be practical on a modern, updated, web-connected Windows environment running modern softaware. But maybe it's fine on a time period PC. Likewise, low demanding users who never increase their demands will be fine with lesser capacities. As a generalization today, for Windows 10/11, I'd look at 8 GB as the ideal minimum (4 GB I guess but that's going to be be awful), and even that's going to be limiting. 16 GB is in that space where it's no longer "a lot of RAM" like it was over a decade ago, but otherwise it will be fine for most, and even many multi-tasking and gaming needs will be met just fine by 16 GB. You just might hit your limits in more and more cases as time moves on and software gets more demanding, and in that case, you simply have to limit what you're doing sometimes.

For my desktop, I upgraded from 4 GB to 8 GB in 2009, and then to 16 GB in 2011, and then again to 64 GB in 2020, so for me, 16 GB (and even 32 GB) wouldn't be enough, but that doesn't mean it isn't for you.

On my laptop I got in 2013, it came with 6 GB (and a 500 GB HDD, which I pretty quickly replaced with a 128 GB SSD). I used it very seldomly and for the internet only, and I found the 6 GB to be fine for what I was doing with it, so I stayed with it for the majority of its life. I did upgrade it to 16 GB later (around 2020 give or take a year?), but I ultimately didn't keep using it much after that point before finally giving it away.

I'd say my examples go to pretty opposite extremes, and I'm the same user. The point with that being, it depends entirely on what you do/run. Some workloads will want more RAM, and others will be fine with less. We can generalize/guess at best. The good thing is, it's unlikely that any single non-specific use case needs more than 16 GB, so you'll likely be able to still get by by closing additional programs and multi-tasking less. And if you're having to ask if you need more than 16 GB, you likely don't right now. Will that remain true for the next year? I can't predict the future of your use cases.

 

[dirtyferret]

my laptop has 8GB of RAM, plenty for MS office, Video Conferring, and eCommerce portals

 

[silentbogo]

I was looking for an excuse to get more than 16GB; didn't find one.

There's always at least one unbeatable excuse - "it was cheap" or "it was on sale".
And given today's news and price trends there's another similar excuse - "it will be more expensive next year".
So if you really want that 32GB DDR4 and just looking for validation - don't bother and just buy it. If you find out that you don't actually need it - you can always sell it (maybe even make a profit down the road due to excuse #2).

 

[dirtyferret]

There's always at least one unbeatable excuse -

today just happened to be a day that ended in "y"

 

[Shrek]

I used the money that would have gone on more RAM for a 118GB optane SSD and a better power supply.

Installing too much RAM and seeing it not used does not seem like a lot of fun to me.

 

[DaemonForce]

I have currently 48GB as I don't have an another DDR4 rig. Should get a cheap replacement board for that malfunctioning Z170 one so I put its RAM to my main rig for while.

If you have ANY kind of dedicated system that is currently in that role because it went EOL and adopted new "legacy" roles for some mission critical situation, that system should be maxed out right now. Not necessarily max loaded but maxed according to whatever speeds and bank sizes seem necessary to keep things running properly for years to come.

My Athlon box is a static clocked single core with NO boost and a grand total of 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 because the system is SFF and memory is just that old. 2GB dimms aren't going to enable new features or stability even if I find them and 4GB dimms invites trouble.

My FX box currently supports 4 dimms but runs 2 sticks of 8GB DDR3 to preserve the high speed memory clocks. It's a middle fallback in case either the Athlon or this Ryzen box poofs for whatever reason. It's quite literally capable of supporting anything I need done. It's kind of nice to have that option in place so if you don't have anything like that, that's probably a sign it's about time to build something that puts your current system there. My Ryzen box runs 64GB and it isn't until I'm doing Blender+Unity+VR+OBS stuff that I actually need anything over 40GB.

 

[Ruru]

If you have ANY kind of dedicated system that is currently in that role because it went EOL and adopted new "legacy" roles for some mission critical situation, that system should be maxed out right now. Not necessarily max loaded but maxed according to whatever speeds and bank sizes seem necessary to keep things running properly for years to come.

My Athlon box is a static clocked single core with NO boost and a grand total of 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 because the system is SFF and memory is just that old. 2GB dimms aren't going to enable new features or stability even if I find them and 4GB dimms invites trouble.

My FX box currently supports 4 dimms but runs 2 sticks of 8GB DDR3 to preserve the high speed memory clocks. It's a middle fallback in case either the Athlon or this Ryzen box poofs for whatever reason. It's quite literally capable of supporting anything I need done. It's kind of nice to have that option in place so if you don't have anything like that, that's probably a sign it's about time to build something that puts your current system there. My Ryzen box runs 64GB and it isn't until I'm doing Blender+Unity+VR+OBS stuff that I actually need anything over 40GB.

I have a box full of DIMMs from 128MB SDR to 8GB DDR3 so no worries for running out of RAM for older systems

Luckily DDR4 is hella cheap these days though it's still capable even being 10yr old platform.

 

[eidairaman1]

Today anything less than 6 Id be concerned about, 4 GB is the minimum Windows 10 will function on...

 

[Bill_Bright]

is 16GB RAM that bad?

"Bad"? It could never be "bad" - unless faulty. While many believe 32GB or even 64GB is the bare minimum you should have, the truth is, 16GB is still a HUGE chunk of RAM for most users.

What I don't see in any of your posts is the type of storage you have. If you have a hard drive, you might consider replacing that with a SSD. Even the slowest SSD will run circles around the fastest hard drives for all disk activities.

What that means for systems with limited RAM (and calling 16GB "limited" is an unfair stretch) having a SSD in there to house your page file* will greatly compensate for any limitations imposed by that measly 16GB of RAM!

The fact is, if you upgraded to 32GB of RAM from 16GB, chances are, for most tasks, you would not even notice any improvement - except that caused by the placebo effect. But even if noticeable, we're talking fractions of a second.

*Side note - concerning the page file - leave the default settings alone! Just let Windows manage it - unless you have advanced education and training in memory resources management and how to calculate those requirements, including full understandings of "peak usage", "commit charges", "commit limits", "hard page faults" and more, Windows knows how to manage the PF better than you do.

 

[freeagent]

For an average guy, whatever that is.. 16GB should be ok. I almost never come close to using even half of my 32GB.

I am just using this amount for 2R performance.

 

[Rayz]

Thanks. for those who ask, I'll be using an NVME Gen4 SSD.
if 16GB is a dumb idea, I believe that I can't be too dumb to choose an HDD in 2024 and for a laptop

 

[Bill_Bright]

if 16GB is a dumb idea, I believe that I can't be too dumb to choose an HDD in 2024 and for a laptop

Huh? You lost me. 16GB is not a dumb idea. If you mean 16GB instead of 32GB, it still is not dumb.

What I would consider "not smart" is going with a hard drive instead of a SSD - especially in a laptop. Hard drives are slow, heavy, slow, noisy, big, and slow. Did I mention they are slow? If you feel you are limiting yourself by "only" getting 16GB of RAM, then that alone is justification to get a SSD instead of a slow hard drive since a SSD will definitely help compensate for the hard drive's slow performance.

 

[Rayz]

@Bill_Bright I meant just that, not going for HDD in any way with any new laptop in 2024. but 16GB RAM for now it is. and i'm happy to know it's not as dumb as I thought it is. I feel better about it now as I have no other choice (unless going with 32GB RAM but waiting for months... that's a long story).

I would like to thank you and everybody for helping me here with your advices.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Good. If you have not bought this new laptop yet, look for one where the RAM is upgradable. Not all laptops support it. Some laptops use surface mounted RAM (and CPUs) meaning it is soldered directly to the motherboard and cannot be replaced. This practice saves space, weight, and costs, but limits upgrade options.

 

[remixedcat]

I make music and I game 16GB RAM and it works ok