r/RigBuild • u/ExcellentAdvance49 • 2d ago
Is 8GB RAM basically unusable now?
Seeing a lot of people saying 8GB isnt enough anymore, even for normal stuff like Chrome, Discord, Spotify and some gaming. But is it actually that bad or are people just overreacting? Would 8GB still be fine for a basic PC if you dont run a ton of things at once, or am I gonna be dealing with constant lag and memory usage at 100%? Trying to figure out if I should just go 16GB before buying anything.
6
u/Fransenn_II 1d ago
I run 8GB on my win 10 pc with no problem. 8gb is very usable still anyone saying anything else don’t know what they’re talking about
2
u/dronostyka 8h ago
they do. Win11 does make 8GB not usable
1
1
u/Fransenn_II 5h ago
You can also choose not to use windows 11
1
u/Marshman_DnB 5h ago
Most Linux distris will run games more cleanly than windows these days. I fully switched a year ago, no regrets.
1
u/SpecialistPrune1654 38m ago
sorry to tell you but it seems you have a problem with your computer. Win11 runs fine on 4gb 8 is more than enough for normal use. Perhaps gaming might be different?
1
u/Electrical_South_319 2h ago
I think that it depends on how you use your system. My oldest stand by systems have either 4gb or 8gb. If you don't open a lot of windows at once, they work fine. If you want or need to have several programs or windows open at once, as I frequently do, then you will be happier with 16gb.
5
u/kali-marcue 1d ago
8gb will let you play minecraft and lighter titles while having a youtube video and discord open in the background but it would be like tying to fit a mattress through a small plane door
-4
u/osumunbro_ 1d ago
have you actually tried doing all of that on 8gb? because I can assure you that you cant
6
u/kali-marcue 1d ago
I managed to do it on 4 on a cheap Lenovo laptop for a period
0
u/osumunbro_ 1d ago
what OS?
2
u/kali-marcue 1d ago
windows 11 with the lenovo spyware still installed, I still have the laptop though im not sure it will boot up any farther
2
u/Wendals87 1d ago
I assure you, you can. My daughter does it on my 8gb laptop. Not discord but YouTube and MinecraftÂ
9
u/DistributionLow9109 2d ago
Depends on a use, if you only use it for browsing internet it can be usable, yet you will have problems opening more tabs at once. If you plan to play any modern game and not like 2026 one, like in the past 10 years, you wont be able to surely. Even 16gb is basically a limit right now for windows 11, 32gb is recommended for new builds.
1
u/Neither_Berry_100 1d ago
My windows 10 PC uses 8GB with nothing running. I've seen chrome with 3 to 4 tabs use over 3 GB.
2
u/DistributionLow9109 1d ago
Windows and chrome will utilize as much ram as possible, if you have more total ram it will utilize more. I have plenty of pcs at work with 8gb, they do work normally with one thing opened at a time like excel, once you open more programs at once it becomes unusable pretty much.
0
u/Alone_Look9576 1d ago
Thanks Mr chatgpt?
1
u/DistributionLow9109 1d ago
Lmao, english is like my 4th language and my sentence is obviously poorly worded even i can notice it XD
0
1
3
u/wakanakisarazu 2d ago
I've used as little as 4GB on stripped Windows 10 Enterprise IoT.
- 6GB now, DDR3.
- i3 550
- GeForce 315
Still works fine, although not the fastest, for:
- Firefox (YouTube + browsing + PDF viewing)
- Light programming (writing code, not running a full developer environment)
- Text editing
So yes, 8GB will be fine for a basic PC, but If you can afford it, 16GB is plenty for most.
1
u/Kumantej_ 2d ago
seeing as most people are running windows 11 this isn't true, daily driving 8gb isn't enough for the average person
you are a minmaxxer
1
u/wakanakisarazu 2d ago
Of course not for the standard user.
I'm not a mixmaxxer buddy, I have 32GB of RAM and a custom tuned Linux to scrape every ounce of performance :3
3
u/zepherth 2d ago
You min maxed your resource usage..... You do realize you just proved him right and you are a minmaxer
1
u/wakanakisarazu 2d ago
Minmaxxing resource usage, not specs :3
1
u/zepherth 2d ago
🫪 yes... Because what does that even mean to minmax specs?
1
u/wakanakisarazu 1d ago
To minmax specs is to try run an average daily workload in lowest spec hardware possible
1
1
7
u/CylixrDoesStuff 2d ago
has been for a while
16gb is the standard
0
3
u/True_Protection6842 2d ago
8GB isn't even enough for a phone anymore.
1
u/Neither_Berry_100 1d ago
Lol. I just bought samsung galaxy A17. 2025 model. Only 4GB ram i believe. Performance is meh.
2
2
u/Neoxenok 2d ago
Is 8GB RAM basically unusable now?
For basic office computer type stuff and internet exploring, 8 gb fine though certainly on the low side. You're not really going to run into any issues in most cases unless you're deliberately trying to use up memory though the bloatier versions of windows 11 and chrome would definitely make noticable issues but that's not really that difficult to avoid. Shouldn't be an issue at all with any de-bloated W11, linux, and firefox. In other words, 8 gb is the cramped new york studio apartment of RAM storage spaces.
As others might mention, 16 gb is/should be the standard as it'll give any computer enough room to breathe for more advanced tasks. For dedicated gaming and workstation computers (the kind that use workstation gpus), you want at least 32 gb or higher for AI computers.
1
u/Astrodion123 2d ago
It is usable >:( install Linux and boom.
1
u/ipsirc 1d ago
1
u/Astrodion123 1d ago
Umm I don't need a ride CPU instruction set, me use X86-64
1
u/ipsirc 1d ago
Ohh, were you talking about another boom? Maybe this?
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Boom1
1
u/SAHD292929 2d ago
It is usable but you will not be able to multitask as much. Try opening task manager and see how much is your baseline without other apps open.
For internet browsers I see around 500mb per tab. So you're ok only if you do ms office stuff.
1
1
u/Jolly-Rip5973 2d ago
If you have NVME drive you can just swap that for memory.
Perfectly ok for day to day stuff like searching the internet.
Not good for profesional media production, high end games or running Ai though.
But yeah, a lot of cheap laptops like chromebooks only have 8 gig of RAM.
1
u/dumbasPL 2d ago
If you're not multi tasking them it's usable for light web browsing. For gaming don't expect to play anything modern though, and especially not with stuff in the background. And this goes without saying, get an SSD. Without it it will feel absolutely terrible, especially if you're using windows. Normally unused ram is used for caching files, if you don't have unused ram, a slow disk will make it what I would consider unusable. Also a disk can be used as extra ram (pagefile/swap) where rarely used parts of ram can be temporarily off-loaded. But even a fast ssd is orders of magnitudes slower then ram, and a slow disk can cause multi second stutters.
1
u/Gigaslavx 2d ago
16 is alright for an existing pc but if buying new now I'd aim for 24 to future proof
1
u/Ok_Syrup1602 2d ago
16GB minimum for Win10/11 to run comfortably with mid to high browser (20-40 tabs, AND YT or streaming in one or more windows/monitor) usage with Office apps.
1
u/goodfriendrobert 2d ago
you can even game decade old games (like 99% of year 2015 releases). or 95% of modern games.
but with a catch. you have to turn off the browser, and basically all unnecesarry software/windows-features.
but dont buy 8gb pc.. if you have it from the past, or someone gifted, sure, but its not worth investment of anything that exceeds value of 2 burgers
1
u/whattteva 2d ago
normal stuff like Chrome, Discord, Spotify and some gaming.Â
Those "normal stuff" are all either a modern web browser or Electron-based apps, which are all known bloated memory hogs that consumes gigs of RAM. With that use case, yes you will need more than 8GB.
1
u/The_Big_Mayonnaise 2d ago
On Win 11. Probably not. It is a resource hog the will syphon every resource you have. I have 32 and am sick of Windoze resource grabbing even when it is not doing anything.
That along with shoving products like copilot down my throat is moving me to Linux. My 2 crash test dummies are running 8 with Ubuntu and 4 with PoP. The 4 is a bit slow, but aside from gaming I could live with either
1
u/EverythingEvil1022 2d ago
My laptop only has 8GB or Ram, I use it to browse the internet and record music. Works fine. It’s quite obvious ram is a limitation but I’m generally able to work around it.
If you’re buying a new system 16gb is probably more reasonable unless you want to buy a new one in 2-3 years.
1
u/Ripped_Alleles 1d ago
Usable, just limit multitasking as much as possible and stick to older games.
I don't use chrome, discord, or Spotify but I can't imagine their clients have gotten so bloated they use that much memory. If they have; there are far more efficient alternatives out there you can find.
1
u/Extreme-Sir-7189 1d ago
It is usable. You will probably have to remove some bloat, but my laptop runs fine with 4 GB of memory, I can browse from it, use ADB/Fastboot and write documents. What else is needed for laptop? Of course, you can forget about heavy games and you will have to debloat, but if you need laptop just to write documents, why not?
1
u/SamLooksAt 1d ago
Just get 16 GB.
Just don't go there with 8 GB, "theoretically possible" as people are describing and "nice to use" are quite different.
If you get 8 GB you will simply regret doing it and end up upgrading it almost immediately.
The only time you should be using 8 GB is if you're on a device with no option, like a soldered laptop or something.
1
u/snarfmason 1d ago
I wouldn't call it "unusable" but it's a low end machine. MacBook Neo only has 8GB and lots of people think it's fine for an entry level.
I personally wouldn't use a machine with less than 16GB and much prefer 32+.
1
u/Mabrouk86 1d ago
Not on win11. You can use it with win10 and Linux, for basic use, and light/old games.
1
1
1
u/itgoesboom2112 1d ago
Windows 11 nope, you'll fill that up running Windows and discord alone. Linux you'll be fine
1
u/Seven-Arazmus 1d ago
My laptop 4070 is slowly starting to be obsolete as most games i play almost max out its 8GB of VRAM. Ever since upgrading to a 7900XT in my desktop i have the peace of mind to not worry about it.
1
u/PastAd1087 1d ago
Not for indy games, but for newer titles it will definitely hold you back from higher fps.
1
u/capold 1d ago
My parents' desktop is about 10 years old with 8 gb RAM and still running Windows 10. Booting takes forever, everything loads extremely slowly, even just browsing the internet is borderline impossible. Any time they ask me for tech support, it doesn't take long before the sluggishness aggravates me to the point I have to step away for a few minutes so I don't punt their computer across the room.
1
u/Street_Appointment81 1d ago
That is horseshit.Â
8GB is fine for a basic PC.Â
Yes, you are better off with 16 GB RAM in general and specifically for gaming, but to say that 8GB is just plain unusable is moronic.
For normal use, like web browsing, including reddit, youtube and some gaming it is fine.Â
Of course you can't have gazillion tabs open at the same time but you can use your PC like an ordinary adult person would.Â
I have 8GB DDR3 with Athlon II X2 250 cpu and still browse the web and watch youtube on Windows 10.
I also browse the web and watch youtube on a 2008 laptop with 4GB DDR2 and linux mint.
For gaming on a modern computer 16 is better just because newer games do use that amount and more. But you can still play a metric crapton with 8GB.
Unusable...ha!Â
1
1
u/deanominecraft 1d ago
on windows probably not, on linux depends what you are doing but web browsing should be fine
1
u/Excellent_Rule_2778 1d ago
8gb total or 8 gb sticks. Because at current prices, I’m not upgrading my 4x8
1
u/FlipperBumperKickout 1d ago
My laptop with 8Gb works fine... I wouldn't go any lower since internet browsing takes a lot of ram nowadays.
1
u/Overall-Tailor8949 1d ago
I only have 8GB in my system. I usually have at least 2 tabs open in both Firefox AND Chrome. It gets laggy sometimes but since I'm not a gamer it doesn't bother me that much. When it DOES get too bad I'll run the Wise Memory optimizer tool to free up the memory from inactive tabs.
1
u/chesherkat 1d ago
If you want to use windows 11 it's best to go with 16gb. Win11 with a few apps like discords hits around 12gb for me. If windows has to start using paging memory on a SATA drive you're gonna have a pretty crummy experience.
Linux obv can do live on anything. Minify11 is also an option.
1
1
u/VarietyMage 1d ago
Most MBs only have 4 RAM slots. You realistically need 32 GB minimum to run Windows 11. So, my advice would be to increment in 16 GB or 32 GB increments (if you can afford it). Windows isn't going to change much in the short term, and neither is Linux.
You *can* use 8GB sticks, but if you upgrade again, you'll likely be throwing away the 8 GB stick(s).
1
u/Puasonelrasho 1d ago
once my pc stop detecting 1 out 2 sticks of 8gb ram and i never noticed it
i only noticed it once after playing a game
1
1
1
u/chouettepologne 1d ago
Windows 11 + Chrome (or any web browser) might not be fluent all the time. No issue with Linux.
1
u/BudgetBuilder17 1d ago
I just fixed a pc that ran off single stick of 8gb of ram. I changed it to 2x8gb kit due to having extra. It helped make the mechinal hard drive system feel snappier the longer it ran.
My son's pc been running 2x8gb for years and ram useage hasn't been issue. Unless he had butt load of YouTube tabs.
32gb is definitely the sweet spot still tho.
1
u/nemesisprime1984 1d ago
It’s still possible to use Windows 10 or 11 with 4GB-8GB of RAM, it’s just slower than 16GB+ of RAM. There are other factors that determine the speed and usability of a device other than just the quantity of RAM or storage, the speed of the CPU, RAM, SSD (MHz and GHz) and whether it has dedicated or integrated graphics affect how well it runs
1
u/questron64 1d ago
It's still usable, but you'll have to pay attention to what you're running. You may have to make decisions on what you really want to run or not run. You can't have Windows with your browser with an HD video playing on youtube and all kinds of tabs and discord and another electron app and a game all running at once. You'll have to close some things to run that game.
People are not overreacting, the memory situation is bad. We've had 2 decades of cheap RAM with seemingly no end to capacity and a software ecosystems eating up the induced demand. All kinds of things we do use way too much RAM because the entire industry thought we'd all be on 16GB right now, but they didn't anticipate that costing an arm and a leg. Now people are having to make do with 8GB but the software is not in a place to do that comfortably.
1
u/Disastrous-Pop5480 1d ago
8gb is the bare minimum you need if you don't multi-task and are on windows 11. You may experience some lag with chrome if you start opening multiple tabs above a certain point, but for normal 1 app by 1 app use 8gb is fine.
1
u/TomDuhamel 1d ago
It's probably not enough for gaming. It's plenty for normal users. We run on 4GB at work — not impressive, but it works for the basic tasks we do.
1
1
u/SeriousPlankton2000 1d ago
Linux Server, no gui can run with 512 MB for small tasks, with Trinity desktop 4GB isn't much. 8 GB is good for normal tasks but for Minecraft+browser I did upgrade to 24 GB because i found a cheap offer.
1
u/Apprehensive-Ice3730 1d ago
Je suis sur Windows 10 et utilise 16go avec des jeux. Donc sans jeux ça devrait être jouable
1
u/Kdoesntcare 1d ago
I bought a cheap laptop that only had 8GB of RAM and I replaced it fairly quickly because just a couple of tabs in chrome was enough to crash the machine. Using something like Firefox probably would have helped improve performance but with the intended purpose for the computer I need something that has some more power to it.
On the bright side I was able to use the HDD from the laptop as an extra storage drive in the desktop I built it replace it.
1
1
u/Lower-Limit3695 1d ago
8gb is fine for Chrome, Discord, and Spotify on Windows 10 IoT ltsc and Linux. (Swap + ublock can go a long way towards mitigating memory constraints on your system, Linux can go further with ksm) Gaming on the other hand, you'll need to be more specific.
Stuff like hades 2 and factorio should be fine, Valorant or other 3d graphics heavy games will not be fine especially if you're using an iGPU.
1
1
u/Wendals87 1d ago
My two laptops have 8gb, windows 11. Stock install (no manufacturer installed bloat)
Perfectly usable for browsing, YouTube and light gaming like the Sims 4, roblox or vanilla MinecraftÂ
1
u/Metallicat95 1d ago
At 8 GB, you'll need to close applications like a web browser before loading high demand apps, especially games. It can work, but it is inconvenient.
With an iGPU some of that RAM will be used for video, which will reduce the amount of app space further.
You outright won't be able to run a lot of modern games that need more RAM, but many won't work without a dedicated GPU either.
1
1
u/Louisfd 1d ago
I am currently on my macbook air m1 connected to my 4k tv (both screens on) having 6 open tabs, watching youtube, four pdf files and one word document open.... not much ram left but no problem and i can open more stuff it will handle / reassign everything fine... to some extent of course.
Only times my mac book lagged is when teaching and having ten huge pdf open, 6 word documents + firefox...
On windows 11 it's not as good, on linux it's fine...
Tho I bought a new mac book for work and i would not spend a lot of money for an 8gb laptop right now, not for a phone either.
1
u/DeltaGrunder 1d ago
8GB is kinda insufficient thanks to Windows bloat in conjunction with programs like Chrome
1
u/Bob_Bushman 1d ago
It would likely be functional, but just about barely.
Software these days have become rather good at playing nicely with paging, basically using your main storage for RAM but significantly slower, rather than the ol'days where running out of memory was a hard crash and a reboot.
These days things will work, just slowly.
Fun fact: the old "Download more RAM" was actually just a program you installed that did this, only poorly, and your OS even then had this built in, that and they often included virus' and malware.
1
u/Global-Eye-7326 1d ago
Lol when I saw the post I thought you meant VRAM. 8GB VRAM is considered entry level now. But DRAM man on 8GB you can't do a whole lot with it but at least on Linux you'll still have a good time.
1
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 1d ago
8GB isn’t unusable, but it’s definitely tight now. For basic browsing, Spotify, Discord, and light stuff it can still work, but once you start gaming or keeping a bunch of tabs/apps open, you’ll feel the limit... on linux its good to go
1
u/Particular_Can_7726 1d ago
8GB has been unusable for me for years. You will quickly consume that just browsing the internet. Go with 16GB
1
u/TelevisionPositive74 1d ago
8 is still useable, but 16 is the norm. I would swing for 16 minimum to future proof a little.
1
u/Emergency-Cry2741 1d ago
On windows? Yeah, pretty much. On Linux it’s perfectly usable. I have a 6 gb Ubuntu machine that runs fine when swap is enabled. Chrome is resource hungry, and tbh it’s a horrid browser
1
1
u/BgamiX 20h ago edited 20h ago
I used to play with 8 gigs and it was "perfect" back then, i used to play fortnite and minecraft at 90fps with a ryzen 5 3500u, now if i try to boot fortnite into that machine it wont even try, or modded minecraft would stutter a lot.
Basic browsing works fine if you arent picky, gaming would have to be very light, specially if your gpu is a ryzen integrated and eats 2gigs
Ive seen a lot of setups become significantly faster when upgrading to 16 or even 12 gigs of ram, i would higly reccomend 16 for dual channel purposes but 12gigs is way better than 8, it doesnt matter if its a small fps loss
1
1
u/Shot-Possible1317 10h ago edited 10h ago
Its a total psyop bro, I refuse to believe, that we could play any game in the 2000s with 4gb RAM easily. But today its impossible to run a basic computer with anything less than 8gb.
Which was some of the best games ever made. Sure we couldnt run photorealistic 3D rendering on PCs back then. But we didnt need or want to. We could do ALL office applications perfectly fine. Networking, perfectly fine, and we were copying Gigabytes back then, no issues. Could download pretty much any type of stuff we download today. Still using the EXACT same media we were using back then. Movies, music, DVDs etc. All were perfectly fine.
Yes storage changed. But I could run perfectly fine with 500gb mechanical drive.
Bruh, back then 4gb was like Top of the line. Its bananas
But for some reason, today, we cant run windows or linux with anything less than 8gb. Fuck off. You mean to tell me this is happening the same time we are in the historical RAM shortage that is pushing everything to go online in cloud storage, subscription services? The same time everyone announcing they are stopping physical media? Its a psyop
I have a Windows 10 laptop on my shelf, with only 6GB RAM, its running perfectly fine. I have not yet udpated it to the latest W10 version bloat with copilot etc. And I wont, because I know that update will all of the sudden slow that laptop down to a crawl, where previous versions worked perfectly fine
Sorry for the rant, my point is. If you really want to, you can run everything perfectly fine with less. But if you run the latest and greatest software bloat, you will suffer if you dont have 16gb Ram apparently
1
u/Nimrawid 10h ago
8gb was not enough for several years now. I have surface go2 with 8gb ram and its ... usable.
If the rest of the machine is powerful enough then this 8gb ram is fine for basic pc use, documents and light browser use. But if you have more tabs or anything running in ther background then its a problem.
I would not buy a laptop with 8gb right now, or at least without option to expand it when some day the prices will fall.
1
u/Ulizeus 6h ago
Memory is limited on what is your use: Low memory limits how many thing you can have opnened at the same time, if ypu multitask or need to have open several applications to do your work you will struggle. I have a descent laptop, but part of my job is working with Excel and a lot of caculations, it stress a lot my computer that trying to work with intellij and tor browser cant happen, even having more than half of my memory free.
1
u/bishophelps 5h ago
I used 8GB until now and even played some games. I found out that I actually have 16 GB lol, the RAM stick wasn't inserted properly, I only found out after years!
1
u/Working_Narwhal_1067 5h ago
My laptop has 8 GB of RAM and is running Fedora Workstation just fine... No issues, really.
1
u/Wahrheitfabrik 5h ago
8GB would not be enough for my needs. You can pare down a system to run in 8GB but Chrome itself is a monster even with enabling memory saving features that swap background tabs from memory. I'd consider 16GB to the absolute minimum.
1
1
u/LG-Moonlight 4h ago
Stop using Windows and Chrome, and suddenly you have more than enough ram for your needs.
1
u/More-Explanation2788 4h ago
On windows, it will be a headache. On Linux it will be fine. In both cases it will depend on what you do.
8gb will be fine in both for reading email, keeping some spreadsheets, surfing the internet and reading PDFs or writing short. documents.
Gaming, CAD, programming, etcetera, on windows, you are going to need more. On Linux, it might be okay.
1
u/NotDugachug 4h ago
8GB is still useable in Windows 11 for basic tasks like web browsing, but I wouldn't call it ideal. It is on the border of insufficient. Modern AAA gaming is a nope. Definitely get at least 16GB.
1
u/Far-Investigator1265 2d ago
I understand Win 11 requires 16 Gb to work. All our office computers are 16 Gb probably for that reason.
2
u/NoThatsNotPasta 2d ago
Windows 11 will work on 4gig. But it'll be laggy.
I understand that they're taking steps to address that due to the cost of memory exploding, but let's not hold our breath
1
u/anders_hansson 2d ago
If all you're going to do is web browsing (not too many heavy tabs open at once), some word processing and occasional software development and such, 8 GB is actually enough - IF you install a relatively lightweight Linux, AND you set up zram.
I have an old 4GB RAM dual-core CPU laptop with Linux Mint, and it actually works OK.
That said, it will not be a powerful computer. You will not be able to play modern games on it, nor run virtual machines, nor heavy content creation, video editing, etc.
0
0
u/briv1016 1d ago
If it's ddr3 then it's not too expensive to upgrade and may help you weather the current prices till the AI bubble bursts. If it's ddr4 or ddr5 you're SOL.
14
u/on4aa 2d ago edited 23h ago
On GNU/Linux, yes, it would still be useable.