When it comes to PC gaming, there has always been the question as to how much RAM you really need. Of course, in the past, it was 8GB, which eventually was bumped up to 16 GB. Ah, yes, 16GB of RAM is definitely the recommended amount, however, there are those who settle for 32GB of RAM. Yet, I’ve seen people striving to get 64GB or more than that, which works, and other times it doesn’t. There’s the fact that memory channels on consumer-level motherboards just aren’t meant for so much RAM.
Still, every so often, I get asked if 16 GB of RAM is enough or if I should upgrade to 32GB or even 64 GB of RAM. Having been asked more than enough, it’s time to set the record straight, or at least until technology proves me wrong – as it often does.
I also want to point out that this doesn’t include handheld gaming PCs, such as the Asus ROG Ally or Steam Deck. Maybe I’ll talk about them at another time, but not right now.
Why would you need more than 16 GB of RAM?
Let’s get the easier answer out of the way first, and then we’ll get complicated. If you’re asking if you need more than 16GB of RAM for gaming, you don’t. The answer, for right now, is no. Adding more than 16GB of RAM is not going to give you any benefits in gaming. It won’t give you better frames per second, like upgrading your processor or graphics card will. If all you do is play games, stick with 16GB as the minimum.
While this isn’t the subject we’re discussing, I will add that adding faster RAM will have some benefits, especially on an AMD Zen chipset.
While that’s the answer for now, it doesn’t mean that’s not going to change. I’ve been involved in the technology / PC world for a long time, and I’ve seen it more from “you don’t need more than 640 bytes” to 8GB, and now 16GB. This amount will change in the future, but as of now, we aren’t there yet.
But if you have a chance to upgrade to 32GB, I wouldn’t say no. However, only do it because you want to. There are no “I need to upgrade” reasons yet. But give it a few years, and I’m sure we will all be shocked to see 32GB of RAM as the recommended spec.
Now, let’s move on to the complicated answer
If you do things other than gaming, it’s going to depend on what you do and if you require more than 32GB of RAM. A good example is if you do video or photo editing and you are using high-resolution images or videos. This is especially true with 4K or above video editing, as programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro or Davinci Black Magic, but you don’t use proxies (seriously, though, you should be using proxies). Those programs will start to gobble up memory like nobody’s business.
Other examples are database administration and virtual machines. I work in IT and manage The Outerhaven website, so I’m also always messing with virtual machines using VMware Workstation or Oracle Virtualbox to do work or test things in a temporary and safe environment instead of causing havoc on my machine PC. Virtual Machines are good for this, but they can also chew through your PC’s memory, as those Virtual Machines sit on top of the PC and will use all its resources, such as CPU and RAM.
With database administration, I’ve never seen SQL steal any and all of your PC’s RAM faster. A misconfigured Microsoft SQL or MySQL/MariaDB SQL database will see your RAM and go, “This is mine now,” and take it all in the blink of an eye.
Yes, some games exist that demand that you have more than 16G of memory to run them. A few games that come to mind include Microsoft Flight Simulator, Returnal, and Hogwarts Legacy if you run it at Ultra, and there are bound to be more. Gaming will eventually require more RAM, and it’s then that we’ll revisit the “Do we need more RAM” in the future.
Finally, the one thing that we’re all guilty of, and what could be the best argument for running 64GB of RAM in your PC – Internet Browsers. Oh, my technology GODS, browsers can sap all of your RAM, leaving you scratching just exactly what happened. Especially with Google’s Chrome or Microsoft’s Edge browsers, since both are based on Google’s Chromium. Opening lots of tabs or new windows will easily use up a lot of your available RAM, and installing extensions, especially poorly optimized ones, makes it even worse.
Take a look at this screenshot. Here, you’ll see that Edge is using 21GB of RAM, thanks to having at least 30 tabs open, all running YouTube, Plex, and a bunch of other things. I can confess that I’ve seen this usage jump up to 30GB. That’s half of my available RAM, and it boggles the mind. Now, I know I’m not the only one who does this.
I hope this explanation answers your question: “Is 16GB of RAM enough for PC gaming?” If not, please feel free to contact me on Twitter or email me directly, and I’ll be happy to help you out further.
