16 is minimum and 32 is recommended if you do much pc gaming, browsing, or torrenting. Things with multiple programs. A single browser and steam open. I regularly hit 16 to 20gb on mint and librewolf.
Sunshine@piefed.ca 1 day ago
I hope 16 gigs is good for a while.
OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I have 8GB in my laptop running mint, its used for browsing, office work, 3D print slicing, and occasionally I torrent a file from it…it is absolutely no issue whatsoever and it never even breaks 4GB use unless it’s actively slicing a 3D model. 16GB minimum I can agree with for gaming, but for desktop use as mentioned above you can easily get by with less.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 day ago
for desktop use as mentioned above you can easily get by with less.
Sure, as long as you’re willing to deal with the performance hit of constantly swapping to disk.
Even SSD drives are a magnitude slower that any modern RAM stick, so you’re adding TONS of processing time by running that little memory. And gods help you if your swap is on spinning rust…
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
If that was the case I wouldn’t have 4GB of idle ram just sitting in my PC. There is no unloading to swap when 50% of available ram is unused.
OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
SSDs are fast enough as swap to be imperceptible to the untrained eye. A good test is to disable swap for a while. You can bet they will see their system grind its gears at some point.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
You can run it on 8GB. Doesnt mean you won’t benefit from more.
Your system outsources the memory to swap space or is memory starved and needs to unload programs.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 22 hours ago
It might mean you won’t benefit from more. If it’s got 4GB of headroom, why would adding more help?
daggermoon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I have 64 and I have rarely ever used as much as 16.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
you must have correctly moved on from Chrome
daggermoon@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Haven’t used Chrome since the Windows 7 days.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I regularly use over 16-24GB of my 32 GB, and considering I just had to replace 4 8s with 2 16s, I’m honestly kinda tempted to get another pair just to have knowing the shit that’s coming down the pipe.
Cort@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I also have 64, but I’ve seen up to 34 in use a couple times. I could have stayed with 48gb, but the timings/cas latency was much better on the 64gb kit, than running mismatched sizes across 4 slots
daggermoon@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I just remembered I did use up to 63GB once. Thanks memory leak.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 day ago
How is it 2025 and people still don’t understand how RAM works?
If you’ve got 64GB of RAM, ideally you want to be using nearly all of that 64GB at all times.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 22 hours ago
Explain why.
Cort@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s not like I’m manually clearing things out of the ram. And before the power outage last weekend I had an up-time over 2 months.
It’s there a way to have the OS utilize more?
Sunshine@piefed.ca 1 day ago
That’s reassuring, gotta make sure I take care of mine. The pc market has been too messy the last few years.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, by the time it becomes an issue you’ll be ready to upgrade anyway. There are few use cases for as much RAM as I have. I only bought it to fuck around with VM’s. I’m probably skipping ddr5 and am5 so you’re in good company.