How Much RAM Should You Get in 2024? 

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The RU-vidr who really values our time... Sometimes i feel sorry for all people who don't know you, you really deserve more followers

I like explain RAM like it’s physical desk/table space. More ram = larger desk/table. You can always working on more things than the desk/table has space for, but completing multiple activities *can* take more time on a smaller desk/table as you may have to shuffle things on and off as needed (eating dinner before playing a board game Vs eating dinner while playing a board game). Depends on the tasks of course, but playing a board game can take up a lot of space.

One thing Josh didn't mention is that some iGPUs can steal away system RAM for use by the iGPU. This is usually dynamic and may rarely be taken away when needed for something other than the GPU. However it's usually a BIOs setting And can just be a static amount that is always reserved for the iGPU whether needed or not

As someone who has been doing desktop support for close to 30 years I can say that as of 2023 whether PC or Mac it is best for everyone to go with 16g of RAM. Even casual users have a habit of creating very complex situations for their machines and having that added memory really helps in not seeing sluggish behavior. Especially because both the MacOS and Windows are eating up more system memory than ever with all the work they are constantly doing in the background. A very basic scenario I see at work is a user with Outlook running, a web browser running, and Word running will be pushing the limits of what 8g of RAM can manage easily. Now a virus scan kicks in, or an update starts to install in the background and suddenly that 8 g feels very sluggish. Or you ask one of those three apps you have open to suddenly do something more demanding and again you're stressing the level of memory. For a long time 4g was fine, then 8g, now it is 16g.

Just met you today Josh. WOW! This was enlightening with its concise/precise information, eloquently put. "'On'ya mate!" And yeah, I'm sure it works for your mum, but you'd make most Aussies proud. Well done Josh. Cheers from Sydney.

So thoroughly and simply explained. Loved it.

My Mac Pro from 2010 has had 128GB since I bought it on eBay in 2017. Twin Xeon X5690's, 24 threads (3.5GHz), nVidia RTX 2080, modern I/O, NVME SSD and internal RAID5, so she still rips pretty well. I plan on keeping her for a while longer too. Running Garuda Linux as primary OS. I haven't considered a new PC since, won't for a while either.

i actually learned something new today, i didn't know you could look at the paging graph on windows. thanks for the tip. subbed

This is the most helpful guide I've ever seen on this platform, Thanks a lot!

I'd find a 32 GB to be future proof, however manufactures providing soldiered RAM laptops are trying hard to prevent that.

thank you for explaining that topic!

Just what I was looking for. Thanks!

thank you very much! and God bless your mother, that was such a lovely sign-off off :) loved, liked, and subbed.

Very good commentary and explanation. Value for time :) awaiting the same info about CPU cores.

I had watched several videos but none help like this...tnx indeed🌷

On the SSD memory swapping point for those curious on the impact, I currently have a Windows 11 laptop with 8GB RAM that I bought just under 2 years ago. Due to the insufficiency of the RAM for my needs I have a 12GB page file to remove hiccups and system halts I'd get otherwise. The swapping does make an appreciable blow on drive health but not necessarily a concerning one in my opinion unless you want to keep your hardware for beyond 10 years. I'm currently at 82% lifespan left, 26 TBW / 150 TBW for 23 months of use, and this laptop is mostly office centric for the most part in terms of workload, does homework, multiple chrome tabs, some gaming here and there, 1080p video edits on rare occasions, nothing special. Comparing that to my desktop that has sufficient 16GB of RAM and no page file at all, I have 95% lifespan for over 4 years of usage on that one. Hope that helps with any purchasing decisions

when you flexed your degrees all the comment section warriors packed up their bags and left lmao

As always, a thorough and detailed explanation of RAM. My conclusions are not always the same as yours due to personal preference but I always appreciate you going into detail and sharing exactly why you made the conclusion you have come to. Thank you!

good presentation Josh, and very carefully delivered. Many thanks for your efforts. Regards N.C.

Great video as always!! I am considering getting a MacBook M1 or M2 for work. I mainly use Excel, Google's online Suite (Sheets...), Python coding and Tableau. I was considering getting the base model with 8GB of RAM. Would you recommend it or should I bump it to the 16GB model?

awesome!!! thanks a lot!!! I work in process automation, including machine vision, integrating but not developing; but I didn't study IT nor electronics, this was big help! ( I must confess I was still using the taskmgr to check performance)

This video was very informative, THANK YOU!!

Back in Feb 2017, I ordered 32 GB for my 7700K-based rig 'just because', which although unnecessary at the time, will help the rig transition to TrueNAS or ProxMox duties.; next time I build a replacement, I will likely get 64 GB for the same reason! :)

Good video. Im considering upgradeing my ram in my laptop for music production since it workss but struggles when working on projects with lots of plugins. I'll 1st cheek the puformance monter thingy.

I just subscribed to your channel just because of this video Thank you I’m glad your channel here Your channel helps keep information balanced

Well that was basically always the question I ended up asking myself the whole time I was hopping around looking at gaming laptops. I had no clue about it, all I knew was that my last Laptop that melted down always said the memory was running at 100% a lot of the time when I was trying to game or even just do basic stuff on the computer. Now that wasn’t a gaming laptop but I didn’t want to immediately have a repeat of that situation by choosing the wrong amount of memory, so this video really helped inform me! I’m a freshman in college and having spent days looking at laptops, finally finding one that I really liked that was also reasonably priced with the help of my sister, and it having soooo many customization options I was worried what features would be worth it to tag on more money for as this is my first gaming laptop ever. Thanks so much for your help in the this process!

Great job as always.

One of the few reviews that did a good job explaining memory requirements. After 42 years of IT experience, I always said more memory is better UP TO A POINT. His explanation of how a machine uses memory was dead.

Thank you Josh! I just watched a few of your mac videos all together. I have a 2018 15" macbook pro and would like an upgrade since I'm doing more 3D work (Cinema4D & Redshift), would be amazing to hear your thoughts about the 16" Macbook M3Max on their performance if you have knowledge on that. Thanks again. :)

Great video really went into detail about the use cases and helped me a lot!

Thank you for this content, I am seing around a brand that I didn't know exist "Captiva" may you tell me some about it is it like MSI was 5 years ago? thanks :)

Awesome video thank you for the input

I love that he recommended a different RU-vidr's video because it had good information in there. Thanks!

Great video. I thought I understood RAM... they you showed me up! By the way, would love to see a review of the Lenovo Legion Slim 7i considering you loved last year's model.

Loved the video but it dint ans the Q i was looking for (no video out there does) if for example i have a 11th gen i5 with 16gb vs 13th i7 with 8gb , which system will perform better for the medium video editing and light gaming use cases ?

8 GB should not be even an option in 2020, let alone 2024.

Hi, do you think the Dell Inspiron 15 i5-1335u, 16gb of ram is a good machine? I am concerned with the low cache speeds vs benchmarks, thanks.

Josh getting straight to the point, no screaming, no fancy intros for 1 minute, no begging for following every 5 minutes. Thank you.

Nice video, I run linux, and after reading and testing a lot I came up with some tweaks to improve memory usage on linux. Zswap/Zram are pretty magical, Zswap is better though. I can use a lot of memory thanks to that. 12GB of ram + 18GB swap file (that is barely touched but lets me have a lot of compressed memory!)

Hi Josh, I seek ur advise. I am planning to buy a MacBook but I have been Windows user for last 15 years. My usage is more and of only business usage - browsers (10 tabs at a time), email clients, PDFs & Office apps (excel, powerpoint, Word), watch vides (RU-vid on browser), NetFlix, music player (VLC), view photos & videos which I shot using a phone, video conferencing (zoom or similar application), Spotify, ... etc which similar in nature. But in combination and not just single task or application. But may be in future want to do "very basic" photo and video editing. IMportantly I want to use my new MacBook for at least 5 years, because all my Windows laptops (DELL) have lasted at least 6-7 years without problems but with just one upgrades of RAM (ONLY) once in the life of that laptop. Do you suggest that I stick to 16GB & 1TB on MacBook Pro with M3? Or do I choose 24GB RAM? Because I have seen that (even for basic users like myself) OS (after updates & upgrades) and applications or programs over a period of time gets computational intensive and memory intensive. Also needing fans as I do not trust Apple with passive cooling (so Pro model). WIth WIndows laptop, I am very clear that 32 GB RAM is needed as Windows memory management is not good and over period of time (in 3 years), its a pain to use Windows with less memory. Your suggestion/advise will be helpful but I do not hold u on it.

tysm. u have cleared my confusion. really helpful video👍👍👍

Best damn video covering this topic by far, and it’s not even close!! I’ve been fighting myself on which one to get for video editing M3 pro vs M3 Max, and thoughts of future proof. He just answered all my questions and concerns in one short video, I’m truly impressed! Great job Josh

I find that if you need to use Excel and use multiple vLookups and cross reference different sheets, etc., then 16GB may not be enough at times if you are dealing with large data sets.

Thanks, a great explanation.

Excellent video. THANK YOU 👍

Good video. Do I understand correctly that memory swapping takes place between the RAM and SSD? What is keeping the cache memory so small?

best laptops for visually impaired? for myself i like the macbook pro but it gets too hot. intel chip. 2018. solution is i have 3x 4K monitors attached so it functions like a desktop. but i need one mobile while returning to school. suggestions?

Very good commentary and explanation. Value for time :)

@7:59 How much is too much paging? and how can you tell what paging is? like what part of the screen am I supposed to be looking at?

Excellent explanation. Thanks

Just Josh, would you be able to do a video where you compare the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i vs Zenbook 14x, please and thank you!

I replied to your first version of this but I wanted to thank you again for this video. If for no other reason than to help your algorithms. 🙂

This is probably the best video I've seen on this topic

Hope am gonna get a response because literally unfortunately i dont understand it. If your laptop supports to be upgraded to 64gb of ram, can i just go to a store and buy the best RAM out there or are also physical aspects of the ram that i should consider. Like i have a lenove thinkpad gen 3 (2022) and i want to update it. So can i just buy the best ramout there or the psychical aspect of the ram should be match my laptop slots. Thank you

EXCELLENT!!! 👌

for the paging usage on windows what range is acceptable or a range that proves too much isn't being used please.

you could demo the memory pressure graph in activity monitor on a mac, that is a good way to know if more is needed

Question... I always have FCPX open, along with photoshop, as well as Webflow.... my workflow requires all to be open. Obviously depending on the type of video im editing... would you recommend 48 or 64GB of storage? I've been 'ok'with 32 but at time the system stalls... this may also be due to full SSD when rendering video. Many thanks!

Hi one question, while I can't do it with the Win VM swap, I moved my Brower cache and Adobe Program stretch to an old SD card, which will last 3-12 months under the abuse. My question is, is this a good way to protect my SSD?

Have just bought a new motherboard/processor for our desktop as currently not compatible with Windows 11, was planning to get 16Gb of RAM but it was only an extra £20 or so to get 32Gb so a bit of a no-brainer, although I don't need it now it could extend the life of the PC by several years.

Hi, I am considering buying M3pro base and I tested my workflow on PC which showed that I am using 57% CPU, 27% Ram in task manager and 40% paging file in performance monitor (PC specs are 10 gen core i9 2.4 ghz, 64gb ram). Would m3pro base specs be enough for this type of workflow?

there are some interesting laptops that are not sold in the US. will u be interested in checking them out? like for example the Panasonic FV series sold in Japan

I can get a good deal for the Legion slim 5 14 (soldered memory) but it's 16GB. If I want 32GB I need to "build" my own and that would be €230 more for just the increased memory. I'm a bit conflicted because I really would like the 32GB but €230 for just 16GB more RAM is just hard to justify

A good trick to accelerate the ram swapping is by putting in a second ssd, and assign the swap file exclusively to that second drive.

How much do you need to run parallels on MacBook Pro m1. Running windows 11

I run a Windows VM for my desktop with PCIe gen3 NVMe storage, it's gone from 8 -> 16 -> 20Gb RAM over the last 5 years. I do run around 300 processes and I can get away with 16 as long as I leave it for 10 mins after startup to allow it to _settle down_

What is the best lap for cording,web development?

I always max out the ram. On my older Nitro 5 I had 32GB of ram (2x16gb), on my current Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 I have 48GB (16GB soldered and a stick of 32GB).

I really need help. I was saving to buy a nice laptop for teaching classes online. My dad went and bought me a 4gb ram laptop instead of a 16gb i was saving up for. Would a 4gb allow me to teach online via video? And run the lesson in another window? And does the hp 14 use a ddr4 ram chip?

For a basic, general purpose office PC, 8gb of DUAL CHANNEL RAM is usually adequate, but anything beyond that use case needs at the very least 16gb of dual channel RAM and in most cases some sort of separate GPU. 32gb and up is not really overkill anymore. Especially with an oinker of an OS like Windows 10 or 11.

'Caysh' - now there's a pronunciation I've not heard before! But I don't have 2 computer science degrees 😂 Great vid!

I am an interior architecture student wanting to purchase a new laptop that I plan to keept for at least 5 years. I frequently use CAD programs and do some rendering. What do you think? Is 16 GB enough?

great vid josh

So happy I have found a reviewer I feel I can trust thanks Josh

Hi Josh, first of all Greetings from Germany, I already saw your M3 Misled Video. I need your advice please. I bought a couple of days ago a MBP 16" M2 Max 12C/38C-GPU with 32gb RAM and 1TB SSD. I am not and will not be a Pro User, I just came back to because I do my private video editing and was interesteing the new apple silicon CPU's. The Software I will maybe use is Davinci Resolve. I have a couple days left to return the MBP if I want, I bought it from a certified Shop not from apple, and after getting the VAT back from the revenue, because I bought it over our company I paid 2.770€. What do you think should I stay with the M2 Max or should I switch to M2 Pro the bandwith is slightly faster ont he Max. Another scenario could be M2 Pro with 32 or 64 GB RAM and just 512GB or 1TB SSD, I will hook up anyways a Samsung M.2 SSD 990Pro. But I thought I'll keep the MBP for the next let's say 8 to 10 years, and the software will getting faster and more CPU and RAM is needed in the future and who know's what else is coming up in the future. So I thought I'm well prepared, so what do you think? Thanks in advance Carsten

I have an M2 Max, with the unified memory the 64gb option seemed well positioned for future proofing. If you watch any of the tech RU-vidrs updating Mac’s released 10 years ago, one of the most common moves is to upgrade the ram to as high as the system was designed for, generally doubling from 8 to 16gb. The big question is: what will be the average amount of RAM be on laptops a decade from now? Or will some other device take its place?

When i use the option open a program with GPU instead of built in GPU, in that case is the program use the VRAM instead of computer RAM? In my case, i have a 16 GB ram and 12 GB VRAM, i use a complex 3d models and the program company recommended 32 GB of RAM

I use my laptop for multiple stock trading platforms, how much RAM would you recommend?

Don't forget that laptops without discrete GPUs also use a part of your RAM (on my AMD 6800H laptop, it uses 4GB of my RAM). 😄

I’m having a hard time deciding between the M3 Max 14/30 Core with 96GB ram VS. the 16/40 with 64GB, please advise.

For anyone who really wants to understand this, please watch Mark Russinovich's "Mysteries of Windows Memory Management Revealed". Part II is most relevant for RAM, but Part I is also well worth watching for a deeper understand. In short, there are two options: 1) Monitor Memory/Available Byes in Perfmon. You likely need more memory if it is consistently low. 2) Start RamMap and open the Priority Summary. You need more memory if priority 6 or 7 has been repurposed.

Josh please do a review of the legion slim 5!!

i work as an IT support, using only web based apps, office task, email, maybe light audio and video editing ( 1080p only ) and small slice of design, still using my 10 years old thinkpad W540 with windows 11 and 32GB of ram and never had any issues at all. ( i know its only runs in sata 3 ssd speed, and far more comfortable with my other younger thinkpad in terms of speed, but since after 4th gen there's no devices than can use 3 drives / SSD+HDD+HDD at the same time, then i think i will stick with this )

2 questions: power consumption & boot time self check is there a negative return past a certain point?

❓Rookie question: Is there a way to suspend tabs on Safari on a Mac as there is on Chrome on a Chromebook (an extension or Chrome itself)? I bought an 8/256 M2 MacBook. I'll be a light user for sure, but now I wish I got 16/256, because I'm worried that having several programs open plus many many tabs will cause hiccups and slowdowns. Any knowledgeable advice would be appreciated on this question as well as how to maximize my existing RAM.

Hi Josh, not expecting you to reply but it would be really helpful if you did. I'm from the UK and I'm looking to buy a laptop for under £700 however in the UK we have heavy VAT on electronics so everything is a lot more expensive than the US and also a lot of the Laptops have different models in Europe than in North America so I can't get any of the laptops you recommend such as the Asus Zenbook 14X because it comes standard with i9 13th gen and is over £1200. I'm looking into a refurbished M1 Macbook Air from 2020 for about £630 pounds for 256GB and £770 for 512GB. However I am concerned if it will be powerful enough and will last long enough. I have a gaming windows desktop at home with 16GB of ram and AMD Ryzen 5 3600 which can run games fine and I've never felt it slowing down. I will be using the Mac for school work while I'm not at home in UK's equivalent of 11th and 12th Grade doing the equivalent of AP Computer Science and also working on an online business when not at home. What do you suggest?

Does this apply equally to windows and m-series mac machines? Does RAM go further on the m-series macs due to the unified memory thingy they've got going on?

Nice vid mate

Have been on 16gb on desktop for last few years and found it has been more than adequate. Finally pulled trigger on an additional 16gb today as it was a pretty good deal. Sometimes it's nice to treat yourself.

Good point to raise about looking at performance monitor rather than memory usage.

I was hoping for more detail on any differences (if any) for different os like Linux or windows vs macOS. But omg thank you for explaining to people that they should check swapping and memory pressure over allocation, I’m sooo tired of people looking at allocation and getting things wrong.

Very well described, sincere advisor

Quick reminder, portable solutions were made for those who are on the go. Get a workstation. Ten years ago I chose to install 32G of DDR3 which I think is set to 1600, and the slowest part was the hard drive which I did provisioning for Windows back then which increased it's performance. Originally I used Win 8 Pro and dual booted to Debian, until I migrated to Win 10 Pro. I should state that I'm on disability and it's no vacation and I miss work, but I digress. So my base FX-8350 eventually evolved to Ryzens and SSD's which I still did provisioning to reduce "wear" by nearly reducing or eliminating Windows pagefile usage. I'm currently using a Ryzen 5900X with a Mobo that has m.2 nvme's with 32DDR4@3400 with 4G for provisioning in Win 10 Pro. I can't afford an nVidia GPU so I get by with a XFX 5700. I do some minor edits to content from my old GOPro HERO8 that's usually 1080, but now and then I do some 4k with it. And I do boot to Debian (testing) to be able to access more editing tools. I hope that Proton develops where my system will no longer be dependent on Windows for my "toys", aka games before the 2025 Win 10 EOL. Unfortunately my posts on provisioning no longer exists as the forum disappeared which I had shared screen shots of my benchmarks and overall system performance in Windows. Last time I played with Cinebench 2024 my system on multi core was 1206 and 99 on single core for amusement. In 3DMark storage benchmarked my slow PNY CS3040 2T with a 5320 score while the average score is 2717. I do transcode my personal DVD's using Handbrake in order to put them on a microSD which I use in a tablet while winter camping. Sunset comes early here in the PNW. 😉✌

18 months ago I built my AMD R9-5950X system with 128GB DDR4 and an RTX-3080. I thought 128GB would be enough. This summer I built an Intel Xeon W7 workstation with 512GB of DDR5 memory and an RTX-3090. Now I'm closer to what I need. I do Unreal Engine 5 video game design and I also work with large terrains with the software I develop called TerreSculptor.

Impressive technique you have ❤

Great & clear

I built a Threadripper 3960X system with 24 cores, 48 threads, a little over a year ago. MOBO (ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha) has 8 RAM slots on the mobo, each can take up to a 32 GB DIMM. But unfortunately, the AIO cooler I bought for it kind of blocks two of the 8 slots (nearest slot on each side of the cpu). So I have 6 slots * 32 GB = 192 GB of RAM. And quite frankly, I love it. Most modern OSes will utilize all of that RAM as disk cache unless and until it needs to release some for application usage. So basically, after bootup, your drives will only need to read a hard drive block once until next reboot, unless RAM gets low, or you are doing something on the machine that necessitates reading MORE than 192 GB of drive data between reboots. Subsequent reads of that same block will come straight from RAM, rather than asking the HD for it. If/when memory fills with disk cache, most OSes will keep track of which blocks of data are more in demand, and will flush the drive data of blocks that are less frequently requested. Long story short, your drives will last much MUCH longer with lots of free RAM. But as soon as you reboot the machine, it has to start back over caching everything again. So it's best to avoid unnecessary reboots.

I remember getting kidded for get an extra 8k in my Apple II for a total 16k. I was in grad school and our main frame only had 16k. A few years later I was recommending 64k. 40+ years later, l recommend a minimum of 8GB. As you said, computers do change over time. 😊

Excellent video! Thank you for clearing things up for me! I'll stick with 32GB Ram