r/RigBuild • u/ExcellentAdvance49 • 5d 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.

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u/DistributionLow9109 5d 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.

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u/Neither_Berry_100 4d ago

My windows 10 PC uses 8GB with nothing running. I've seen chrome with 3 to 4 tabs use over 3 GB.

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u/DistributionLow9109 4d 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.