How Much RAM do I Need on My PC Depending on Its Use?

The RAM is a vital component in a PC, and no matter what you go to use it, you need it. The question in many cases is: how much RAM should I buy? We will never want to fall short or spend and spend extra money, so we will give you a series of tips so you can choose the right amount for your PC.



Although many think that "better than not missing", it is often absurd to spend extra money on RAM that, perhaps, you could have invested in a better graphics card or processor. For this reason, it is important to choose an amount of RAM that is consistent with the use that you are going to give the device, and although in each era there has always been an amount considered as standard, the type of use you are going to give to the device It will be the one that, in your particular case, determines how much RAM you need.

PC RAM
PC RAM

It is necessary to take into account a data, and it is the allocation of memory of Windows 10, since the more RAM memory is available, more quantity takes "in cache" to allocate more quickly to the applications. Likewise, as always it will depend on the programs that you have in memory when starting the equipment (in our case, we have Corsair iCUE, Razer Synapse and Powerchute (for the UPS)) and for each system the amount consumed, therefore the figures will vary from user in user, but still serve as a guide.

  • Office and multimedia use: in this case we have the Chrome browser open with 10 tabs, Adobe Photoshop, VLC playing a Full HD video, two Microsoft Excel documents, a Word document and Outlook with email. The RAM consumption in this case amounts to 6.9 GB.
  • Use for games: for this scenario, we have Chrome open with 3 tabs, Discord, Black Desert Online minimized in the tray, and League of Legends in the foreground. The RAM consumption in this case is 10.1 GB.
  • Use for multimedia creation: for this other scenario, we have Chrome open with 5 tabs, VLC with a 4K video, Outlook with mail, an Excel document, and ProTools 2018.4 with the entire WAVES plugin suite and with an open postproduction session It contains 7 tracks and a total of 2200 audios in WAV format. The RAM consumption in this case amounts to 16.8 GB.
  • Video editing: here we have Chrome open with 10 tabs, Outlook with mail, an Excel document, VLC with a 4K video and Adobe After Effects editing a 25 GB video at 4K resolution. RAM consumption trips up to 20.3 GB.
  • Virtual machines: this scenario is subjective since it will depend on how many virtual machines we have and how much RAM we have allocated. For example, if we have two virtual machines to which we have allocated 8 GB of RAM to each one, the consumption will be 16 GB only with these and, therefore, it will not give us objective data. However, it is mandatory to include it since many users have virtual machines. In our test, a single virtual machine created with VMWare with 16 GB of RAM allocated and consumption was at 20.1 GB, that is, the operating system was only already consuming 4.1 GB of RAM.

So how much RAM should I buy?

Office and multimedia use

In this case the consumption of RAM is not very high, but still we must allow room for the allocation of resources to all types of applications. Today, 4 GB of RAM is already insufficient, so 8 GB of RAM would be ideal for this case.

Use for games

Taking into account our tests, and that titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 already recommend having 12 GB of RAM available for the game, the appropriate amount should be 16 GB of RAM as a general rule. Rarely, to say never, you will need 32 GB of RAM if the main use of the equipment is games, because as we have seen in our test even having two different games open at the same time the consumption barely exceeded 10 GB.

Multimedia creation and video editing

This is a very particular scenario, and in which we could surely include streamers that broadcast live and / or edit their videos after recording them. According to our tests, 16 GB of RAM fall quite short in this case, and the recommended amount would be 32 GB.

Virtual machines

If you use your PC as a laboratory with virtual machines, it will depend on what you will need here. If you are going to have a single machine with 4 or 8 GB allocated, with 16 GB of RAM you will have enough, but if you want to have several machines with a lot of RAM allocated, then the amount of RAM that you will need to have will be triggered.