It depends on what you do, whether you're gaming or doing professional content creation.

Let's say that it begins to be necessary yes.
Today a single game will eat up around 13 GB RAM (sometimes minimum).

Like sylvie said, it also dpeends on your pc usage.
I still recommend you to get 32 GB RAM. IT's not expensive and you don't need " ultra fast RAM". So, if you pay around 90 bucks for 2 X 16 GB RAM it's amply sufficient.

sure

Go to Steam's Best of 2024

Click through those games store pages and look at their system requirements. The majority of the recommended system requirements is 16GB; and a very large amount of the minimum memory requirements is 16GB.

Then do the same with the monthly 2025 lists and you'll see titles are starting to have a 32GB recommended and 16GB minimum requirement; such as Oblivion Remastered.

It really depends on what you're doing; but even your stated use case you'd be using about 64% of system memory; and assuming by "google" you mean using the chrome web browser, that can vary pretty significantly depending upon how many tabs you have open. Also, if you were doing your use case on a system with 8GB of memory you'd be constantly swapping and your performance would be trash; hence why people tend to say with current-day typical use 16GB is largely the minimum because dropping to 8GB will often result in out-of-memory (OOM) issues.

Only if having a measly 16 GB bothers you. Everytime I see 7 GB out of my 32 GB utilized, I realize I never needed 32 gb but I would have always wanted a bit more than 16.

There is no singular amount that is or isn't enough for everyone. It depends on your personal workload. If your workload is never using near or more than 16 GB, then you don't need more. Once it starts to, then you do need more (or you need to trim back your workload).

If the PC uses DDR4 and you plan to keep the PC in use for some time, it might be worth preemptively upgrading to 32 GB because DDR4 RAM pricing is going to be going up soon (it might have already started).

more ram only helps if you need more ram

if building a new pc, get 32g (2x16g) or larger 2 dimm kit

adding 2 more dimms can limit the rams speed since its more load on the cpus memory controller

at this point it has nothing to do with gaming but how the memory controller works on DDR5.....

DDR5 has 4 32bit sections VS the old controllers on DDR4 having 2 64bit sections....2 sections are on each stick of memory and 8gb per section is needed as it takes 8gb to get to 32bit on the memory stacking....so you need 2 16gb sticks to fill out all 4 sections of the memory controller on DDR5.....

if you go 16gb on 2x8gb you will only have 64 total bits of the memory controller leaving half the controller unused

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Only if having a measly 16 GB bothers you. Everytime I see 7 GB out of my 32 GB utilized, I realize I never needed 32 gb but I would have always wanted a bit more than 16.

If I remember right, you moved to AM5 which uses DDR5. For DDR5, 32 GB is sort of a "floor" capacity because that's the capacity you arrive at when using two DIMMs of it. They simply don't make DIMMs with lower capacity DRAM chips for it.

You CAN still get 16 GB (or even 8 GB) for DDR5 but then you're doing one or both of the following...

1. Using a single DIMM, which means no channel, which hurts performance.

2. Using 8 GB DIMMs which do exist despite me saying minimum DRAM capacity isn't low enough to result in it. This is because the 8 GB DIMMs aren't made with lower capacity DRAM chips, but they simply omit some and use half the amount, and this also hurts performance.

In other words, if you're on a DDR5 platform and if lower cost above all else isn't your concern, it's recommended to have 32+ GB regardless. So even if you're not using the full capacity often, going with 32+ GB was the better choice.

(Pretty sure you got it in a bundle at Micro Center because you said you upgraded despite not needing to, but I'm just explaining for informative purposes why your amount isn't a waste.)

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Only if having a measly 16 GB bothers you. Everytime I see 7 GB out of my 32 GB utilized, I realize I never needed 32 gb but I would have always wanted a bit more than 16.

If I remember right, you moved to AM5 which uses DDR5. For DDR5, 32 GB is sort of a "floor" capacity because that's the capacity you arrive at when using two DIMMs of it. They simply don't make DIMMs with lower capacity DRAM chips for it.

You CAN still get 16 GB (or even 8 GB) for DDR5 but then you're doing one or both of the following...

1. Using a single DIMM, which means no channel, which hurts performance.

2. Using 8 GB DIMMs which do exist despite me saying minimum DRAM capacity isn't low enough to result in it. This is because the 8 GB DIMMs aren't made with lower capacity DRAM chips, but they simply omit some and use half the amount, and this also hurts performance.

In other words, if you're on a DDR5 platform and if lower cost above all else isn't your concern, it's recommended to have 32+ GB regardless. So even if you're not using the full capacity often, going with 32+ GB was the better choice.

(Pretty sure you got it in a bundle at Micro Center because you said you upgraded despite not needing to, but I'm just explaining for informative purposes why your amount isn't a waste.)

Well, I did get it from Microcenter but the kit I got wasn't a part part of the bundle (even though I know this isn't the focus of your post). The bundles I looked at had what appeared to me to be the lower quality ram kits so I avoided it and bought them separate (if I remember correctly, that's how it went down).

You know, I have always said that the specifics of hardware always go over my head and I just don't commit those kinds of details to memory so I don't look at it the way you explained it (and the same way that will make users on here derail into page long arguments onto what works better than what), so all that info didn't factor in when making my decision on memory (though, thanks for trying to explain to me). I just looked at it as "should I get 16 GB ddr5 (2x8) or 32 GB ddr5 (2x16) and chose 32 gb because 16 gb would make me feel like I shouldn't even bother upgrading since I had 16 gb before.

Glad to hear I made the right decision though, because I would probably look at my system in disgust if I had 2x8 ddr5 after hearing what you said. I'd feel like it's crippled, heh.

Yes.

16 gb gives people who game some issues currently. Would get 32 gb as a safe minimum for gaming.

To run windows smoothly you would need 8gb, if your favorite game says it needs 8gb then you need 16gb minimum.

I have one that runs smoothly with 32gb, the os needs 8gb which puts me at 40, that's one of the reasons i went to 64gb.

I was asking about RAM for gaming while ago but recently, and i didn't get any real clear answer about it, because it sounds that 16GB is minimum, 32GB is ideal and majority is using it, wile more than 32GB is just for future proof or that one or two games hunger for RAM unnecessary such as Flight Simulation or Tarkov, so i don't know who i should believe, and someone as a good respected Youtuber who tested many games and computers builds and experimenting and playing games just said that it is better now to start with 48GB or more, 32GB will no longer be sufficient in near time for some games if not all, and i have one computer build that is only for gaming and nothing else, and i want to keep using it for a decade [7-10] years without changing it or upgrade a lot.

Originally posted by tareqalhamrani:

...because it sounds that 16GB is minimum, 32GB is ideal and majority is using it, wile more than 32GB is just for future proof or that one or two games hunger for RAM unnecessary such as Flight Simulation or Tarkov...

You got the right idea here. Ignore the youtuber. Go with 32 gb in 2025 unless it's to save money.