The age-old question of "how much RAM should be in my gaming system" has had the same answer for years now. 16GB was the de facto amount of memory that was considered more than enough for gaming. But times have changed. 16GB is no longer enough, and the proof is in the pudding. The memory usage of most games has gone up significantly, and if you're running 16GB, you might actually run into issues with newer titles. As a result, 32GB is now the sweet spot for gaming machines, and here's why.

4 Games are becoming increasingly RAM-hungry

16GB can be eaten up pretty easily

Computers are slowly creeping up in memory capacity, and as they do, so do the requirements for games. 16GB will allow you to get by, but it definitely doesn't go as far as it once did. Even with my 32 GB system, I find situations where I use in excess of 20GB while gaming. Of course, your system will be a bit more liberal with how it uses memory when you have more of it, but at 16GB you’ll find yourself running close to the edge. Even while just running around on an offline, empty map in Escape From Tarkov, half of my 32GB is utilized. Other, more modern titles will absolutely use a lot more than that if it's available to them.

3 Multitasking becomes a lot more doable with more RAM

For those who like to hoard browser tabs

I’m no tab collector, but I do like to multitask on occasion. I might want to fire up a game, a YouTube video on my other monitor, as well as whatever I have running in the background. Depending on the game I’m playing, this can easily put me well over 16GB of RAM usage. Having to worry about closing extra tabs and background processes just to make sure my system doesn’t start spiraling into page file purgatory is such a drag. Having 32GB of RAM helps you avoid this completely, and also gives you more space to be a bit more loose with your system’s processes.

2 Memory prices are low, even for high speed stuff

High speed and capacity don't necessarily correlate with high cost anymore

Gone are the days of prohibitively expensive RAM. High capacity DIMMs of both DDR4 and DDR5 are quite inexpensive at the time of writing. 2 sticks of 16GB DDR4 can be found for around $50. DDR5 varies a little bit more in price, but you can easily find 32GB kits for under $100. So long as there isn’t another global pandemic event anytime soon, these memory prices should stay quite stable, making upgrading quite feasible. Even if you’re crafting a new build, going with 32GB of DDR5 isn’t going to break the bank.

1 You're likely to be short on VRAM in the future

If you're not already, that is

As stated before, games are becoming more and more memory hungry, and that couldn’t be more true in the VRAM department. Running out of VRAM means your PC has to dip into system memory. If you run out of both VRAM and system memory, lets just say you’re going to have a bad time.

Your graphics card’s dedicated memory is high speed and is found directly on the PCB of the card, but both AMD and NVIDIA have been rather stingy with providing more VRAM on their mid-tier cards in recent years. Depending on how the RTX 5000 series shakes out, having some more RAM definitely won’t hurt, especially if it's high speed DDR5.

32GB is truly the Goldilocks zone for gaming

16GB is too little, and 64GB is too much. 32GB provides a nice happy medium for system memory, especially in gaming workloads. If you're swapping to a new platform or planning a whole new build, 32GB should be your new minimum. If you just upgraded and still only have 16GB, you can easily throw another couple of sticks into your system, so long as the timings and speed match, otherwise you might run into some issues. In most cases, it's worth just buying a whole new kit to avoid the headache entirely.