Should computer makers start adding 12GB of RAM on all average home desktop computers?

froggyboy604

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I think adding 12GB of RAM to average home desktop computer can be a good idea. I read a few forum posts where people complain their computer with 8GB of RAM is using up most of the RAM when browsing the web with web browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox with many tabs open. Adding 12GB of RAM may prevent some of these RAM related slowdown problems.

People also install a lot of Computer Security software like Antivirus, Antimalware, Antiransomware, firewall, proxy software, VPN software, File backup and recovery software and encryption software which now uses more RAM if they are all running at the same time. If you want to be more protected from malware, and hackers having a lot of RAM is important for staying protected, but not getting slowed down by the security software using too much RAM because you only have 8GB or less RAM, and many other programs opened.

More people are also playing PC games, and editing large video files in 4K which will work faster with 12GB of RAM.
 
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If you're using up 8 GB of RAM for browsing programs with a few security programs running, I can't help but feel there might be something wrong with your system.
 
If you're using up 8 GB of RAM for browsing programs with a few security programs running, I can't help but feel there might be something wrong with your system.

Sometimes, if you have too many add-ons like Ad blockers, browser themes, antivirus web browser add-ons, and Plugins like Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc installed on your web browser, and many tabs open, your PC can use a lot of RAM.

Security programs may use a lot of RAM if you install all the bundled features like antispam, antifraud, antimalware, antiransomware, online shopping protection, adblocker, etc onto your system.
 
After all the years I've been a PC gamer, I've never built a rig that needed more than 8GB of ram. Even by today's standards, that's overkill.

12GB of RAM is what you put into your video editing computer when you're trying to render a 1080p video that's over an hour long, and get it done in less than a day. I'm typing this on a crappy ASUS laptop (x540s) with only four gigs of RAM, and I have 60 tabs open in chrome right now. It hasn't lagged or stuttered yet, even with its abysmal quad core Intel Pentium N350 CPU.

If the damn thing is sluggish in 8GB of ram, then the system is being bottle-necked by something else entirely. More often than not, it's the disk-based hard drives that spin and require a needle to read and write data. No amount or RAM will speed up your computer if your drive is some un-optomised hard disk, because the hard disk is virtually guaranteed to get slower over time no matter what.

If anything, manufacturers need to start replacing these things with solid state drives. (SSDs.) They're basically a cartridge with no moving parts, that substitute a physical hard drive. SSDs absolutely annihilate hard disks in terms of read/write speed.
 
After all the years I've been a PC gamer, I've never built a rig that needed more than 8GB of ram. Even by today's standards, that's overkill.

12GB of RAM is what you put into your video editing computer when you're trying to render a 1080p video that's over an hour long, and get it done in less than a day.

A lot of computer users now record video in 1080P, and sometimes 4K now, and SD cards can now hold many hours of videos, so more RAM would be useful for people who record a lot of videos from their camcorder or Digital video recorder to record HD TV channels.

Adding an extra 4GB of RAM to a system with 8GB of RAM is one of the more affordable upgrades for a desktop PC. Buying 4GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM cost between $30-40 compared to a SSD which cost $270 dollars for a 1TB SSD.

There are Virtual RAM drive programs which let you use unused RAM as a virtual RAM drive to temporarily install programs, so they run faster by using unused RAM as storage, but if there is a power outage, or you turn off your computer all the files will be gone.

I read replies on How long until 8GB of RAM is not enough? • r/buildapc which said some games like Star Citizen, Witcher 3, and Planetside 2 can use more than 8GB of RAM when you have more than 8GB of RAM like 16GB of RAM installed on a computer.

A lot of Reddit members on the Reddit topic say they experience faster Google Chrome, and Gaming performance after upgrading to 16GB of RAM.
 
A PC gamer doesn't need to replace the entire hard drive. Most of us just buy a 120GB SSD, just to hold the Operating System, while keeping all the programs and files on the hard disk. You can actually set up your boot drive and your file drive separately using a windows 10 CD. You basically get the same result for less money, and even more disk space.

I'd rather have 16GB of ram than 8, but there comes a point where RAM can only go so far where performance is concerned. I say deal with the slower things first.
 
A PC gamer doesn't need to replace the entire hard drive. Most of us just buy a 120GB SSD, just to hold the Operating System, while keeping all the programs and files on the hard disk. You can actually set up your boot drive and your file drive separately using a windows 10 CD. You basically get the same result for less money, and even more disk space.

I'd rather have 16GB of ram than 8, but there comes a point where RAM can only go so far where performance is concerned. I say deal with the slower things first.

It is cheaper to add 4GB of RAM which cost $30 or more, and see if the extra 4GB of RAM can improve the performance, user experience, reliability, and reduce the number of freezes because of low RAM in Windows when multi-tasking. Using an SSD can be expensive, and some users maybe fine with the slower performance of hard drive.

Most cheap desktop computer users use onboard video chips built-into most desktop CPUs. The onboard video chip uses the RAM installed on the motherboard, so having more than 8 GB system RAM could be useful when you don't use a dedicated PCI-Express video card. AMD APU which is a AMD Processor with a built-in Radeon video chip dynamically changes the video RAM usage, so there are times your 8GB RAM on your motherboard will dedicate less RAM like 4-7 GB to running Windows, and programs depanding on how the AMD APU dynamically change RAM levels for the CPU and built-in video chip on the CPU.
 
12 seems a bit high, most laptops etc don't even guarantee the 8 here in my country. I think it should be 8 at a minimum but think 12 is too much just for browsing the web etc.
 
I use a heavy browser with other stuff, my ram barely hits 4 GB. Though I don't know if that includes the OS usage.

There are casual users who never close their programs, and keep a lot of programs always open because they are too lazy to close programs, or don't know how to close them.

There are some people who have many heavy web browsers open at once because they share the same PC and user account with other users who may prefer to use Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer/Edge, etc, and users will keep the other web browsers like Chrome and IE which another user open while they use their favorite web browser like Firefox.

Scheduled tasks like Windows Update, disk defrags, antivirus scans and update checks, and e-mail client checking for e-mail on an e-mail server, and other scheduled and background tasks can suddenly increase the RAM usage if there is a software problem which makes the schedule task use too much RAM, and repeat the scheduled self too often.

12 seems a bit high, most laptops etc don't even guarantee the 8 here in my country. I think it should be 8 at a minimum but think 12 is too much just for browsing the web etc.

The web may become more RAM intensive as broadband speeds become faster, and more people can afford faster computers with more RAM, a faster CPU, and video chips. People can now watch 4K video online which was not possible a few years ago when most videos where published in low quality video file formats. Playing web browser Games in 3D and high video quality settings maybe a common activity in the future.

When buying a $500-600 desktop tower PC, it is good idea to buy a little more RAM, so it is less likely not to have enough RAM to run newer versions of software like video editors, and other software release in the future. People sometimes use their desktop computers for many years longer than average laptops which sometimes get stolen, lost, or break many years before a desktop computer breaks. A good desktop computer can sometimes last around 10 years if you maintain it, and occasionally replace broken parts when needed.
 
I'm using a 12 GB RAM PC at work.
Would understand that if I would have to run a virtualisation server on it, but I don't.
It's quite pointless if you ask me.
 
I'm using a 12 GB RAM PC at work.
Would understand that if I would have to run a virtualisation server on it, but I don't.
It's quite pointless if you ask me.

12GB of RAM is pointless for you today, but once Windows use more RAM resources when Microsoft add more features, and background programs to Windows, the 12GB of RAM can help with keeping Windows running smoothly. Programs like Antivirus programs may use more RAM in the future because cyber attacks like ransomware is becoming more advance, so antiviruses will need to work harder to try to stop advance cyber attacks. When programs work harder, they use more RAM and CPU resources.

Very large file size database and spreadsheet files can run faster from having more than 8GB of RAM since database and spreadsheet files can be over 8GB in size, so loading and running the entire or most of the big file on RAM will make searching, changing data in the database and spreadsheet faster than accessing the data from a slower hard drive and SSD which is not as fast as DDR5 RAM.

You can always use the extra 4GB of RAM to create a RAM drive where you temporarily store files and programs on RAM, so they load faster.

If you have a desktop computer, having an extra stick of RAM can be useful instead of just one stick of 8GB RAM. RAM sometimes break, so if you only have one stick of RAM installed your whole computer would not work until you replace the stick of RAM. But, if you have two sticks of RAM, you can just remove the broken stick of RAM, and leave the non-broken stick of RAM in, and your computer will work again unless both sticks of RAM break at the same time, or your RAM slots are broken.
 
The point is, my workstation is running Ubuntu with the i3 window manager, not Windows.
So unless I have to use Chromium or Firefox all the time (which I have to use as a web developer), the 12 GB of RAM is forever empty.
 
The point is, my workstation is running Ubuntu with the i3 window manager, not Windows.
So unless I have to use Chromium or Firefox all the time (which I have to use as a web developer), the 12 GB of RAM is forever empty.

I used Ubuntu on my older computer with 3GB of RAM, Ubuntu run very quickly even when I have many programs like Firefox, Libreoffice Writer, VLC media player, and other programs open. I seen Ubuntu and other Linux OS like Puppy Linux running on slower computers with 1GB of RAM and an older single core CPU.
 
I did have someone today come in looking for a 16 GB laptop to run a very high end program.

Wow, a 16GB RAM laptop sounds like a power house. Most PCs I seen with 16GB of RAM usually have a very fast CPU, and a fast video card which can play games at highest video quality settings, and in 4K if the computer is connected to a 4K display.
 
And all of that has nothing to do with 16 GB of RAM.
I upgraded my iMac from 2009 to 16 GB of RAM, because I wanted to run lots of private VPS servers on it, but ended up not doing so.
But what's funny nowadays is that most people demanding the most powerful machines out there are either gamers (which is perfectly understandable), or just some peeps that all they do on their PCs is browsing on Facebook (to which I think "why can't you just live with a regular PC?").
 
And all of that has nothing to do with 16 GB of RAM.
I upgraded my iMac from 2009 to 16 GB of RAM, because I wanted to run lots of private VPS servers on it, but ended up not doing so.
But what's funny nowadays is that most people demanding the most powerful machines out there are either gamers (which is perfectly understandable), or just some peeps that all they do on their PCs is browsing on Facebook (to which I think "why can't you just live with a regular PC?").

I think some people just want a powerful PC because they feel a faster PC would make using their computer more fun, or they don't know what else to do with their money because they don't have or can't afford more expensive hobbies like traveling, and owning a luxury sports car, so they spend their money on expensive electronics like gaming computers, smartphones, and big screen tvs which they enjoy owning.

A fast computer is a status symbol to some people to show others how they can afford nice stuff like a faster computer. Using an older and slower computer maybe embarrassing to them because they have self-esteem problems which cause them to buy nicer things like expensive electronics, cars, and clothing to make them feel better about themselves, and impress people.

I think one of the reasons the Apple Macbook Pro and iMac, and some PC brands like Alienware and Razer are popular is because they are used as a status symbol by some owners to show other people how modern and trendy they are.
 
I think one of the reasons the Apple Macbook Pro and iMac, and some PC brands like Alienware and Razer are popular is because they are used as a status symbol by some owners to show other people how modern and trendy they are.
Not necessarily.
I've owned laptops of multiple brands in the past, but Apple is by long shot the most durable one.
Dells broke on me after a year of use, Acer and HP broke even sooner, and don't get me started on ASUS.
I bought my first Apple computer in 2009, and it still runs like brand new in 2017.
Same holds true with my Microsoft Surface tablets, they're all still running really well after quite some years.

So more expensive laptops do matter in my experience.
Not because of horse power, it's really all about stability.
Just in case, almost all these computers have ran Linux, a few were running Windows, but that's because it was required for university.
 
Not necessarily.
I've owned laptops of multiple brands in the past, but Apple is by long shot the most durable one.
Dells broke on me after a year of use, Acer and HP broke even sooner, and don't get me started on ASUS.
I bought my first Apple computer in 2009, and it still runs like brand new in 2017.
Same holds true with my Microsoft Surface tablets, they're all still running really well after quite some years.

So more expensive laptops do matter in my experience.
Not because of horse power, it's really all about stability.
Just in case, almost all these computers have ran Linux, a few were running Windows, but that's because it was required for university.

A lot of professionals like computer programmers, scientist, and entertainers like singers and actors use Apple computers. If you mainly use your computer for creating content, storing important work files, and replying to very important e-mail, it is important to have a computer which is less likely to break at random times. I seen some pretty old Apple Macbooks used by family members, and strangers, and they seem to work after many years of use.

One of the problems with buying many Windows Laptops and pre-built desktop PCs is that the quality of pre-built computers can be very low quality because the laptop brands like HP, Dell, and Acer may pick the cheapest parts which are usually low quality, and hire the cheapest lower skilled factory workers who may not care as much about carefully building a laptop because they feel they are being taken advantage of because of their low wages. Lower skilled factory workers may more likely stab the motherboard with a screwdriver, or not use proper anti-static tools to prevent static shock from damaging PC parts.
 
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