I'm now using mostly Steam Deck as my main gaming device, but before that I had 2x32GB DDR4 RAM modules in my desktop. The RAM is very cheap nowadays (compared to other components), but I only used it when I did some work with containers or VMs. So in most cases it's just overkill.

Quoting: d-_-bAm I old fashioned, or do these user RAM stats seem to be slightly embellished by at least one or two units of 8 ?😂

If you check the Steam Hardware Survey, you see that the average hardware specs of Linux users seems to be higher than for Windows. It's always been like that. Probably has to do with the more technical minded nature that Linux users leading to the willingness to spend more money. And memory is always useful. Swap files suck, so having enough memory to not need them is great. If I'd build a new machine today, I'd put 64 GB in it.

I upgraded to 32GB i think around a year ago. 16GB just wasn't enough when pushing some of the top-end AAA games.

Quoting: d-_-bhttps://www.gamingonlinux.com/render_chart.php?id=1655&type=stats

Perhaps more surprising is the number of folks claiming to have 64 freaking GBs of volatile memory installed:

64GB: 224 (9.29%) Difference: (+4.67% overall, +10 people)

Am I old fashioned, or do these user RAM stats seem to be slightly embellished by at least one or two units of 8 ?😂

Also... That's like 20 ppl total... Of a 200 plus person poll.

I built mine with 32 in 2019. It replaced my PC from 2006. I tend to build aiming for efficient longevity. It is cheaper to splurge on memory then than try to source memory 10 years later.

I run 32 GB in my desktop computer, but not for games. I keep a couple VMs running simultaneously for work, so those run much better and it makes life a lot easier if I load up on RAM.

Were it not for the work reasons, I think I'd be fine with 16.

Quoting: d-_-bPerhaps more surprising is the number of folks claiming to have 64 freaking GBs of volatile memory installed

Guilty. When I built this rig, 64 wasn't much all that more than 32 of the memory I wanted so I nabbed it. Overkill, yeah totally... but now I can have *several* Chrome tabs open at once!

Just switched from 32 GB to 64 GB when doing recent PC upgrade. Prices on RAM really dropped recently, so why not.

Example: https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-64gb/p/N82E16820374443

I run a bunch of VMs for building things, so more RAM is useful.

Last edited by Shmerl on 23 August 2023 at 5:49 pm UTC

Quoting: d-_-bhttps://www.gamingonlinux.com/render_chart.php?id=1655&type=stats

Perhaps more surprising is the number of folks claiming to have 64 freaking GBs of volatile memory installed:

64GB: 224 (9.29%) Difference: (+4.67% overall, +10 people)

Am I old fashioned, or do these user RAM stats seem to be slightly embellished by at least one or two units of 8 ?😂

I have 32GB of RAM, despite having a very "underpowered" computer by most "gaming PC" standards. The fact I have an iGPU is part of the reason, I have no VRAM so gotta have a bit more RAM to share with the iGPU. I also work with numerical calculus and can allocate some humongous matrices, so I can use as much RAM as I have, and use as many CPU cores as well (theoretically could also use CUDA and a GPU but that would require some big changes). But one of the main reasons is that I built this computer last year and I want it to last at least 10 years, so future-proofing it a little bit with regards to RAM sounded good.

I would guess that most people just got it because compared to the ridiculous cost of GPUs, performance CPUs, high-end motherboards and crazy NVMe storage (large and fast!), why skimp on RAM. You may never need it, but it is not entirely useless - it will cache stuff and allow you to have more tabs open? And if something ever happened to be RAM-bound (like say, a large Factorio game) you don't have a bottleneck in your fancy GPU holder gaming PC.

Maybe some people have, like me, jobs and other circumstances that demand tons of RAM - working with virtual machines for testing software, for example, or large datasets... but I think it's more of a "gaming PCs are just so expensive already, what is a few orders of magnitude increase in RAM anyway".

Last edited by eldaking on 23 August 2023 at 10:03 pm UTC

NVMe storage got pretty cheap actually. Example: https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Platinum-Internal-Compact/dp/B09QVD9V7R

It's not only about how much RAM you need to run your applications, it's that you want to be able to cache as much of your storage as possible and have lots of memory for buffering. Yes, even NVME drives are orders of magnitude slower than RAM.

Fill up your slots with the highest capacity DIMMs your chipset will take :-)