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.

Am 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.

https://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.

Perhaps 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 Aug 2023 at 5:49 pm UTC

https://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 Aug 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 :-)

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

You are talking to someone that thinks any dGPU is a luxury and expects a computer to last for at least a decade (and lives in a non-developed country so electronics are a bit less accessible in general). My standards of what is "cheap" are a bit... different.

Last year I got my first ever NVMe drive, last month I got my dad a 480GB one (WD Green, nothing fancy) as a much needed upgrade to his new laptop. Heck, I got my first SATA SSD a couple of years ago as a replacement for a failing HDD. I have no idea how much those parts costed before, but it is still not cheap enough for me

(And yet I still have 32GB of RAM. A bigger NVMe is probably the one real update I expect to make to this machine in the future, to extend it to its expected 10+ year lifetime)

(And yet I still have 32GB of RAM. A bigger NVMe is probably the one real update I expect to make to this machine in the future, to extend it to its expected 10+ year lifetime)

Prices dropped a lot in the couple of recent years. Not sure what's going on, but $150 for high end PCEe 4.0, 2 TB NVMe SSD like that SK Hynix one is ridiculously cheap.

Also, note that investing in bigger capacity SSD is actually good if you want longer lifetime for it. Bigger capacity directly affects wear rating for the drive, so the bigger it is, the longer you can use it before it has to be replaced. So it pays off to get bigger ones. You can check endurance / wear rating for the drive to get some idea.

Last edited by Shmerl on 23 Aug 2023 at 11:27 pm UTC

I have 32GB for video editing, image editing, desktop publishing, running various local services...it basically funds my inability to focus on one thing at a time.

(And yet I still have 32GB of RAM. A bigger NVMe is probably the one real update I expect to make to this machine in the future, to extend it to its expected 10+ year lifetime

This! Basically for me, long term, NVME, PCIe, etc aren't going away in 10 years. I can wait and do small upgrades to extend my PC's life.

DDR4 and my chipset (especially the chipset) will be phased out over the same time. So I tend to focus on getting the most out of those.

(And yet I still have 32GB of RAM. A bigger NVMe is probably the one real update I expect to make to this machine in the future, to extend it to its expected 10+ year lifetime)

Prices dropped a lot in the couple of recent years. Not sure what's going on, but $150 for high end PCEe 4.0, 2 TB NVMe SSD like that SK Hynix one is ridiculously cheap.

Also, note that investing in bigger capacity SSD is actually good if you want longer lifetime for it. Bigger capacity directly affects wear rating for the drive, so the bigger it is, the longer you can use it before it has to be replaced. So it pays off to get bigger ones. You can check endurance / wear rating for the drive to get some idea.

My NVME is only a 512. My steam deck has more !! 🤣😂🤣. My only complaint about NVME is the physical connection. It's large compared to SATA and at least in the case of my motherboard, there's only one. I guess I need a USB adapter to image a new one? Compared to SATA, it seems a little wasteful...

This! Basically for me, long term, NVME, PCIe, etc aren't going away in 10 years. I can wait and do small upgrades to extend my PC's life.

DDR4 and my chipset (especially the chipset) will be phased out over the same time. So I tend to focus on getting the most out of those.

Yeah, that was exactly why I got more RAM for future-proofing (but not a huge-ass NVMe). Last year I was also fixing and upgrading a desktop I assembled in 2012, that my sister used... and I couldn't get any DDR3 RAM with equivalent timings, so had to compromise, and it wasn't nearly as cheap as I expected. I got DDR4 right when DDR5 was coming out, so I doubt it will get much cheaper - and certainly not as easy to find.

I mostly use my 32G of RAM as tmpfs to host clean chroots for building Arch Linux packages.

tmpfs  /scratch/chroot64   tmpfs defaults,size=25g,x-systemd.automount  0 0

that being said, there's probably out there a few handful games that recommend 32GB. But honestly I think it can be worked out if you are willing to compromise some bling.

Cities: Skylines with DLCs does not work with 24 GB without SWAP.

that being said, there's probably out there a few handful games that recommend 32GB. But honestly I think it can be worked out if you are willing to compromise some bling.

Cities: Skylines with DLCs does not work with 24 GB without SWAP.

Uh, and back close to release (up to Snowfall) I played it (more like suffered it) with 8 GB. Sure, on minimum and only small cities with (almost) no mods and it was still slow, but it ran.

But yeah it is 100% the kind of game I'd expect to benefit from a ton of RAM, and not only because it uses Unity which is awful at freeing memory (not an issue at all for most games, but big 3D games like Cities Skylines and Battletech suffer). Big management games just have too many elements being calculated constantly, especially late game, and that is not even counting the assets to display those elements. Once you add mods (and those games are perfect for modding) you need even more stuff loaded into memory at once. So Factorio, Satisfactory, Cities: Skylines, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and the like are big RAM eaters. Also 4X and other large strategy games, if you push map size too far (some games allow you to select absurd map sizes if you can run them, and RAM does matter though CPU is also a big bottleneck).

i was sick of firefox caching youtube, twitch, etc on my SSD and wrote up to 20GB per day. (it is not that bad since my SSD has a TBW of 600TB, but i do not wanna stress my SSD if i do not have to) i found no other way than using Profile-sync-daemon (i puts the whole browser cache in RAM)

i dont know why browsers do not use RAM as streaming cache

so i upgraded my RAM to 32GB since it was pretty cheap. and it is so much cheaper NOW. i mean you get 32GB DDR4 for around 50€. of course i take it

Last edited by mylka on 24 Aug 2023 at 10:50 pm UTC

I've got 128GB of DDR4-3600 RAM. I had the money at the time & just said fuck it & maxed it out. My performance did improve slightly going from 2 32GB sticks to 4 32GB sticks though.